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The boa and the elephant: a parable against corruption

Writer: StrategosBIP
StrategosBIP
Nov 5, 2021
4 min read

We Colombians, tired and powerless, await a giant boa that will eagerly swallow the enormous elephant of corruption, with the help of an anti-corruption czar.


By Juan Carlos Buitrago Arias | November 5, 2021



Image accompanying The boa and the elephant, a parable against corruption.

The elephant of corruption keeps growing, as 79% of society confirms.


I once visited Sololá, a city three hours from Guatemala City. There lies Lake Amatitlán, one of the most visited natural attractions in the Maya country, sheltered by imposing, sharply outlined mountains and volcanoes. Twelve Indigenous villages, each named after a saint, lie around it. The picturesque, majestic landscape is made captivating by the warmth of its people, their ancestral wisdom and the extraordinary strength of men and women who diligently work with cacao and cotton. They produce a variety of chocolates and fine, colorful woven garments using dyes extracted from local plants and exotic insects. Visitors from around the world stay there, including writers and painters who draw inspiration from nature. Most villages are reached by boat. Once there, Maya women wearing the huipil and tzute invite you on a tour. To reach the lookout, you can take a tuk-tuk, the same vehicle we use in Barichara.


We read The Little Prince as children or adults; it is a work for every age. Its author, the French pilot and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, spent time in Atitlán after going into exile in the United States during the Second World War. Exploring Central America, he discovered this extraordinary place and, inspired by the shape of one of its mountains, Cerro de Oro, created the parable of the boa and the elephant. The mountain’s hat-like silhouette sparked Antoine’s imagination: he drew a boa that had swallowed an elephant. The writer’s ingenuity encourages us to broaden our perspective and think outside the box. The Little Prince inspired a film and has been one of history’s bestselling books, with more than 100 million copies sold, following Don Quixote, A Tale of Two Cities and The Lord of the Rings.


This parable captures how Colombians feel: tired and powerless, waiting for a giant boa to appear and eagerly devour the enormous elephant symbolizing corruption in our country. A week ago, an Invamer survey showed that corruption remains society’s greatest concern, as 79% of respondents confirmed. Fedesarrollo published the conclusions of an expert commission proposing valuable solutions, yet we remain stuck with more of the same. The central problem keeping us in a repetitive cycle of diagnoses, proposals, recommendations, initiatives and road maps is our failure to understand that it is futile—almost impossible—to keep seeking a way out of corruption while relying on a political class that benefits from power rooted in a perverse machinery of corruption. This is the elephant the boa must swallow, or the hat of authority that is everything except what it claims to represent, surviving through an appearance of legality while sweeping dirt under the rug.


The first task in advancing the fight against corruption is to exclude the corrupt political class from the debate.

The first task in advancing the fight against corruption is to exclude the corrupt political class from the debate. This seems impossible: they influence legislation. Yet there is no other path. Defining this group is difficult because it occupies a gray area—a symbiosis of distorted values and backroom deals that binds its members through a decidedly negative sense of solidarity.


The second task is to concentrate the anti-corruption effort within specialized units of the justice system, oversight bodies, government institutions and the financial system, directing them toward a shared effort to characterize, uncover, expose, prosecute and dismantle corruption networks.

Criticism must not discredit or discourage the quiet, highly successful work of the technical and operational units of the Inspector General’s Office, the Comptroller General’s Office, the Attorney General’s Office, the Finance Ministry’s Inspector General for Taxes, Revenue and Parafiscal Contributions (ITRC), the Financial Information and Analysis Unit (UIAF), the DIAN and the National Police’s judicial investigators. These institutions have experienced, committed, qualified and honest staff. They are the true safeguard of these investigations and should be brought together into a united, unbeatable anti-corruption force that is wholly nonpartisan, secure and protected.


A decisive step toward a complete change of direction could be to adopt a model already tested in other countries with urgent and extraordinary results: an anti-corruption czar. Unlike those of the past, this leader should have no political origins and should be independent of the executive and legislative branches. The role should be held by an unimpeachable figure at the highest level, preferably appointed by the high courts, the Attorney General’s Office and oversight bodies, with broad powers to lead and guide the most significant anti-corruption investigations. The elephant keeps growing.


LPNSN: In light of the climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, urgent action is needed against deforestation caused by illegal mining, logging, unauthorized cattle ranching and drug trafficking in protected natural areas. Authorities need a comprehensive, sustained emergency response; isolated efforts are ineffective.




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