These bad times of public-private corruption and devastating natural phenomena that we live in Peru, show us a reality that the authorities and politicians did not see or never wanted to see: the weakness of our institutions.
To show this example: several years ago, Dr. Kuroiwa warned about the disasters and the vulnerability of the population zones if corrective measures were not taken from the city halls, regional governments and central government. Since 1998, there were multiple threat maps for 170 cities, but what happened in 2017 with the “Coastal Child”? According to the COEN: 101 deceased, 149 thousand affected, 950 thousand affected and 205 thousand homes affected. But also hundreds of kilometers of destroyed roads, dozens of destroyed bridges, hundreds of kilometers of damaged irrigation canals, thousands of hectares of crops destroyed, etc.
Some additional indicators that show us the little Institutionality in Peru: Peru has more than 70% of employment in informality, 9 of its Regional Governors are imprisoned for corruption and 5 are being processed, according to the Comptroller 12 thousand six hundred million annual they steal acts of corruption from Peru …
And you will ask: What do these figures have to do with institutionality? The answer is EVERYTHING, because these indicators show us the result that our institutions have not been functioning.
And our Institutions, why could not they bring order to all this?
Why have we had to go so far as to lose dozens of human lives, have hundreds of thousands of victims, lose thousands of kilometers of road infrastructure, irrigation, production, water and sewage, destruction of towns and cities, … to give us Mind that now we must do things right?
However, nowadays, despite what we have experienced, why do our cities continue to grow without planning?
According to the World Economic Forum, Peru is ranked 106 out of 138 countries in institutionality and also in the tail of the countries: ranked 131 for organized crime, 134 for poor regulation, 112 for bad public spending, etc. How do we pretend to be an OECD country if we do not first rebuild and strengthen the INSTITUTIONALITY (with a capital letter) in Peru?
It is very important to first become aware of this, I think we have already done it, but the second part is missing: changing our attitude as a society respecting the laws and strengthening institutions.
In Peru there are millions of honest citizens, we pay our taxes, we comply with the rules and we want a decent Peru and public institutions that are modern, solid, reliable, predictable, efficient, lasting and respectable. We can not pretend to move to development but structurally change institutions.
It is an urgent task of the Powers of the Peruvian State to carry out the reconstruction of the affected areas with speed and success, but also, today more than ever, the reconstruction of the Institutionality in Peru begins. We must all support this effort!
May 18, 2017
By: Gabriel Amaro, Executive Director AGAP
