Referring to the report on the 'Corruption Perceptions Index' released by Transparency International on Malaysia's poor performance, Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz (BN - Padang Rengas) made a rebuttal in Parliament stating that Singapore's low levels of corruption is largely due to the fact that it is an island which consists of four million people. He also added that, Singapore's minute population is the main reason why corruption is less likely to occur, as opposed to Malaysia who has five times as many people. It is noteworthy that in the aforementioned report, Malaysia ranked 44th, while Singapore ranked 5th.
In my opinion, such a rationale is inaccurate if not absurd. However, assuming we employ the logic in Nazri's argument that a nation's population, inter alia, determines its corruption levels, it would therefore be valid to claim that nations with a smaller population is less corrupted and vice versa.
Therefore, the question at hand is - can a small country not have high corruption levels? Having said that, one should consider countries in West Africa like Sierra Leone and Swaziland. In accordance to the statistics, while the former has a population of 5.8 million, it ranked near bottommost at 142th place. Likewise, Swaziland ranked 121th out of 163 countries despite a tiny population of a mere 1.1 million.
Next, let us focus on countries with massive populations. According to the flow of logic in Nazri's argument, the larger a country the more corrupted it is. This assumption is erroneous as one should consider countries like the United States and United Kingdom, who possess populations manyfold greater than Malaysia. The statistics reveal that the United States and United Kingdom have a population of 300 million and 60 million, but rank 20th and 11th respectively.
As can be illustrated from the aforesaid explanation, size does not usually play a role in determining a nation's corruption level. With real examples provided, Nazri's logic is effectively disproved since not all small countries are squeaky clean, and similarly, not all large countries are badly corrupted.
In my opinion, such a rationale is inaccurate if not absurd. However, assuming we employ the logic in Nazri's argument that a nation's population, inter alia, determines its corruption levels, it would therefore be valid to claim that nations with a smaller population is less corrupted and vice versa.
Therefore, the question at hand is - can a small country not have high corruption levels? Having said that, one should consider countries in West Africa like Sierra Leone and Swaziland. In accordance to the statistics, while the former has a population of 5.8 million, it ranked near bottommost at 142th place. Likewise, Swaziland ranked 121th out of 163 countries despite a tiny population of a mere 1.1 million.
Next, let us focus on countries with massive populations. According to the flow of logic in Nazri's argument, the larger a country the more corrupted it is. This assumption is erroneous as one should consider countries like the United States and United Kingdom, who possess populations manyfold greater than Malaysia. The statistics reveal that the United States and United Kingdom have a population of 300 million and 60 million, but rank 20th and 11th respectively.
As can be illustrated from the aforesaid explanation, size does not usually play a role in determining a nation's corruption level. With real examples provided, Nazri's logic is effectively disproved since not all small countries are squeaky clean, and similarly, not all large countries are badly corrupted.
