Maldives has been named one of the ‘worst regional offenders’ in corruption by Transparency Maldives, in their Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) listing for last year.
The country ranked at a low 112 out of the 180 nations that Transparency ranks annually, making it part of the two-thirds that scored below 50 out of 100.
“This year, the index found that more than two-thirds of countries score below 50, with an average score of 43” Transparency said.
The Maldives has been allocated a CPI of 33, three points below the 36 it got for 2016, and is listed alongside Algeria, Bolivia, El Salvador, and Niger.
Transparency cited threats against civil society, media, and journalists, as a reason for the drop in Maldives’ rank.
“Just last year, Yameen Rasheed, an outspoken critic of the Maldives government was murdered for his efforts to uncover the truth about the disappearance of journalist Ahmed Rilwan” Transparency stated.
Transparency, this year, analyzed the relationship between freedom of the press, expression, and civil societies with perceived levels of corruption.
Transparency found that a total of 352 journalists were killed between 2012 and 2017 in nations that scored below the average index each year, while only 16 such murders had been seen in said five-year period in nations that scored above the average.
Maldives appeared in Transparency’s CPI listings in 2007 for the first time, and continued to be included in the lower part of the list until 2011, when Maldives was ranked a landmark low of 134 out of 180.
The Maldives was not included in the list, which has been compiled every year for over two decades, afterwards until 2016.
The Transparency Maldives, in 2011, said this was due to Transparency not being able to acquire adequate data from its three expert sources, which is the organization’s criteria for the listing, which has become a widely used indicator in the years that it has been in existence.
New Zealand was again ranked 1st, with a rank of 89 – a point below its score of 90 in 2016. The top handful of slots are taken up by countries in the Northern end of the global divide. Singapore is ranked 6th, with a score of 84.
Somalia is ranked at the bottom of the list, and having regressed from its only double-digit score in the last decade in 2016, is ranked ninth. Between 2012 and 2015, Somalia had consistently received an index of eight.
