Ethics Newsline®

Seven time zones east of Washington, a story is unfolding with profound impact for the twenty-first century. It centers on the tumultuous Ukrainian presidential election, and it involves three intertwined forces — democracy, corruption, and moral courage — that came into sharp focus last Friday.

That was the day Ukraine’s Supreme Court ruled that the November 21 runoff election had been marred by “systemic and massive violations.” It also ordered a new runoff, now scheduled for December 26, between the declared winner of the previous election, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, and the Western-leaning opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko.

Commenting on the first of these three forces — the yearning for democracy, bubbling up everywhere across the old Soviet Union — Russian political guru Grigory Yavlinsky noted the historic precedent set by Friday’s ruling. “For the first time in the territory of the former U.S.S.R.,” he told the Interfax news agency, “a top judicial body has rejected falsification … and mockery of the people’s will.”

He knows whereof he speaks. As the leader of Yabloko, Russia’s liberal party, Yavlinsky is one of the canniest tour guides along the circuitous road from Communism to democracy. I talked with him in Moscow in 1998, a month after former Russian president Boris Yeltsin’s government was engulfed by a political crisis concerning the mysterious disappearance of nearly all of a $4.8 billion infusion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It was a crisis of global proportions, leading to a free fall of the ruble and a one-day, 512-point drop in the Dow. When I asked why it happened, Yavlinsky pointed to two causes. First, he said, the West ignored the fact that Russia’s legal system was incapable of supporting a Western market structure. Second, the IMF, when it made its loans, silently ignored corruption in the Russian financial system.

Little wonder, then, that Yavlinsky sees this week’s Ukrainian decision as such an important milestone. This time, the legal system proved up to a task that many doubted it could perform: asserting the primacy of the Constitution over current electoral laws. Doing so, it took a giant step along the road to replace the rule of men with the rule of law.

Yavlinsky’s second point, about corruption, also figures here. The name of Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine’s current president, has become almost synonymous with corruption. Few observers were surprised when the campaign of his hand-picked candidate, Yanukovich, careened into fraud, violence, and even an alleged effort to poison his rival. The surprise, instead, was reserved for the justices of the Supreme Court who, like so many of their peers in the post-Soviet states, were suspected of being under the thumb of the central government. Asserting their independence, they came down forcefully against those most able to do them harm.

That’s where the third strand of moral courage comes into play. The justices were courageous, but they weren’t alone: They had been joined already by a host of courageous individuals including young police cadets, Western-looking business leaders, independent journalists, a prominent media owner, and at least one well-placed member of the secret security services. They, along with the street crowds of citizens and students supporting Yushchenko, had read their modern Eastern European history. They must have known they were headed toward one of two Czechoslovakia-like options: 1968, when Soviet tanks crushed the democracy movement of the Prague Spring; or 1989, when street protests centered in Prague finally toppled the Communists in the famous Velvet Revolution. Ukrainians must have glimpsed the promise of the 1989 solution. Yet with Russian president Vladimir Putin swinging his weight behind President Kuchma and Yanukovich, they must have felt a frisson of dread about a possible 1968-like reprise.

But that’s what moral courage is about: the willingness to take a stand for principle in the face of significant danger and often significant ambiguity. It’s the ingredient that determines which of the other forces prevails. Take away moral courage, and the corrupt use of state power can easily squelch the forces of democracy — as it still might do in Ukraine. Add moral courage to the mix, and it has a winner’s edge in the long term — although democracy may still fail in the short term, as it did in Prague in 1968 or Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Such failures, however, don’t diminish the moral courage of those involved. It’s just that we don’t know their names. The names we most revere in the struggle for democracy — India’s Mahatma Gandhi, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, Poland’s Lech Walesa, the Czech Republic’s Václav Havel, Myanmar’s Augn San Suu Kyi — all exemplify moral courage. The history of democracy’s twenty-first-century battle with corruption, in Ukraine and elsewhere, will add to this list. Either that, or there won’t be much history to write.

©2004 Institute for Global Ethics

“One wonders about the utility of the General Assembly on days like this. One wonders if there can’t be a clear and direct statement on matters of basic principle, why have this building? What is it all about?”

– John Danforth, retiring U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, denouncing the U.N. General Assembly last month for avoiding a vote condemning human rights violations in Sudan. After the General Assembly’s inaction, the measure was killed in committee, reported the South African Broadcasting Corporation.

(“Danforth Faults U.N. Assembly on Sudan Ruling,” New York Times, Nov. 24; “UN Panel Refuses to Criticize Zimbabwe and Sudan,” SABC, Nov. 25)

SAN FRANCISCO
By a narrow vote, a small group of California officials last week removed Sean Harrigan, an outspoken advocate for corporate governance reform, from his role as head of CalPERS, the nation’s largest pension fund.

Harrigan, who will lose his post as board president on January 1, ruffled feathers of many powerful firms by advocating for labor and spearheading efforts to rein in what he viewed as abusive corporate practices and excessive executive pay.

Under Harrigan, the 15-member board of the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) used its $178-billion clout to push for changes at Coca-Cola, Disney, Safeway, the New York Stock Exchange, and elsewhere.

By threatening to pull its sizeable funds from firms whose practices indicated poor governance to the CalPERS board, Harrigan led a movement urging greater governance, while also angering critics who accused him of fighting for issues unrelated to simple fiscal governance of the CalPERS pension fund.

Harrigan’s ouster was characterized by some as a goal of business groups and Republican Party officials, with California Republican Party spokeswoman Karen Hanretty hailing it as “a step in the right direction.”

Richard Holober, executive director of the Consumer Federation of California, told the Los Angeles Times that Harrigan’s ouster “is clearly a shot across the bow coming from Wall Street, the Chamber of Commerce, and big corporations, who are very anxious to remove the spotlight that CalPERS and shareholders put on corporate misdeeds.”

Both the state’s Chamber of Commerce and the office of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger denied involvement in engineering Harrigan’s removal, reported the Times.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

OTTAWA
Canada is preparing a retaliation plan against the United States over the Byrd Amendment, a U.S. law allowing the transfer of cash duties to U.S. competitors from foreign companies deemed to have engaged in unfair trading practices.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has ruled that the law violates U.S. obligations under the global trade rules of the WTO, and has allowed seven jurisdictions including Brazil, Canada, the European Union, India, Japan, and Mexico to retaliate against the United States.

Even calls by the Bush administration for Congress to repeal the law have been ignored.

What has particularly irked Canada is that billions of dollars extracted from Canadian lumber companies could be transferred to U.S. competitors even though NAFTA trade panels have rejected the U.S. allegations of unfair subsidies.

Canada is drawing up proposals for imposing tariffs on $10 million to $20 million of selected U.S. imports from about 25 U.S. states, and will consult Canadian businesses on the proposed list.

There are reports that the Prime Minister Paul Martin and his trade officials will inform President George W. Bush on his first official visit to the nation’s capital that there is no real desire to impose retaliatory tariffs on the United States, which is the destination of 80 percent of Canada’s exports, but that Canada must act to preserve its rights under global trade law.

After the WTO ruling late last month, President Bush said the United States would conform to the WTO ruling, though the timetable and compliance steps have yet to be spelled out, reported the Agence France-Presse.

COLUMBIA, South Carolina
Following a bench-clearing brawl just before Thanksgiving, officials from Clemson and the University of South Carolina announced that they would pull their football teams from lucrative post-season bowl games.

Though arch-rivals on the field, the schools said they felt it was important to come together to penalize their teams comparably, “sending a message that the behavior that occurred … is deplorable,” South Carolina president Andrew Sorensen told the Charlotte Observer.

After rough treatment of South Carolina’ quarterback with less than six minutes left in the game, members from both football teams launched into fights that covered 60 yards of the field. Lasting for about 10 minutes, the brawl had to be broken up by law enforcement and security personnel, according to the paper.

South Carolina athletic director Mike McGee said the forfeiture of expected bowl slots would cost the school more than $1 million in lost revenue and bring an abrupt end to the career of retiring South Carolina coach Lou Holtz.

“After much consultation … we felt it was necessary to decline any bowl invitation we would receive this year,” said South Carolina athletic director Mike McGee. “The actions on Saturday are not consistent with the core values, morals, and ethics at the University of South Carolina.”

Coming one day after the headline-grabbing fighting between fans and players of the NBA’s Indiana Pacers and the Detroit Pistons, the universities said they felt it necessary to send a strong message.

“I have absolutely no illusion that the decision by two universities acting in concert on a punishment for their respective teams will put an end to the senseless acts of mayhem,” Sorensen said. “But it is high time that we university presidents, who ostensibly lead institutions dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and the promotion of civility, let our students, faculty, staff, and alumni know that we will not condone such reprehensible behavior.”

Clemson athletic director Terry Don Phillips said that while the punishment is unfair to players who steered clear of the fighting, skipping the bowl bids “is the right decision so that our university, our student-athletes, supporters, and all people that love Clemson know without question what our values are.”

COLUMBIA, Missouri
Only three weeks after opening, the University of Missouri at Columbia’s new $75 million basketball arena got a name change last week after a TV show raised allegations of academic cheating by its original namesake.

The arena had been named after Wal-Mart heiress Elizabeth Paige Laurie, who was accused last month of paying her former college roommate at the University of Southern California $20,000 to do her homework over 3-1/2 years.

The charges were made by the roommate and aired by ABC newsmagazine “20/20,” reported the Associated Press.

While the allegations are still under investigation, parents Bill and Nancy Laurie waived their naming rights, which were awarded after they contributed about $25 million to cover one-third of the construction costs.

“We’re very appreciative to the Board of Curators for moving so quickly to get this matter resolved, and also to the Laurie family for their assistance and cooperation,” athletic director Mike Alden told the school’s Maneater newspaper. “This has been an unfortunate situation for all parties involved.”

The Paige Sports Arena is now the Mizzou Arena, bearing the nickname of the University of Missouri at Columbia and waiting while roughly $40,000 in printed materials and signage are replaced.

So far, there is no word on whether the university will retain the endowed professorship at its College of Veterinary Medicine also funded by the Lauries in honor of their daughter, noted the Kansas City Star.

The Star also did a status check, noting that stadiums across the country have faced similar scandals, scrambling for new titles when their namesakes were bankrupted or busted for crimes, like Adelphia and Enron.

LONDON
British schools last week grappled with several aspects of youth violence and bullying, including the release of a poll that found one-fifth of U.K. parents saying their kids had been bullied in the past year.

One-third of the 1,600 surveyed parents said the bullying had been physical, according to the poll commissioned by the National Confederation of Parent-Teacher Associations, reported the BBC.

The poll’s release coincided with the country’s first anti-bullying week, which also ushered in calls for teachers to specifically track antigay bullying, as they do with racist and sexual bullying.

The week also witnessed the launch of a new Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Award honoring students who make an “outstanding contribution” to anti-bullying efforts, according to the BBC.

Among those not in contention are more than 40 girls suspended last week for ganging up and threatening a fellow student over her interest in a boy.

The crowd of 13- to 15-year-olds was “one of the most unpleasant cases of bullying I have ever seen,” Glenmoor School head teacher Pam Orchard told the BBC. “I can only describe it as mob rule taking over.”

Some of the girls’ parents have complained that the mass suspension was unduly harsh, saying their daughters were simply trying to figure out what was happening during the fight, noted the Guardian.

WASHINGTON
Under the current federal push to teach abstinence-only sex education, many of the most widely used curricula are providing young people with “false, misleading, or distorted information,” according to an analysis by congressional staff.

Of the 13 most commonly used curricula, 11 contained “major errors and distortions of public health information,” according to an analysis by the Democratic staff of the House Government Reform Committee.

The report claims that the curricula include factual errors including warnings that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that touching a person’s genitals “can result in pregnancy,” that HIV can be spread by sweat and tears, and that a 43-day-old fetus is a “thinking person.”

The analysis, commissioned by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), also charged that the approved curricula ignored, rejected, or wrongly analyzed scientific findings, according to the Washington Post.

The analysis was criticized by proponents of abstinence-only sex education, who complained that Waxman was trying to undermine their efforts to stop young people from having sex before marriage.

Waxman countered that he was concerned about factual flaws and bias that could leave kids dangerously misinformed if they do decide to become sexually active.

“I have no objection to talking about abstinence as a surefire way to prevent unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases,” Waxman told the Post. “I don’t think we ought to lie to our children about science. Something is seriously wrong when federal tax dollars are being used to mislead kids about basic health facts.”

President Bush, an avid promoter of abstinence-only programs, requested $270 million for such efforts in 2005. Even though Congress cut that figure to nearly $170 million, the total is more than double 2001’s figure, summing to a total of nearly $900 million over five years, according to the Post.

According to the latest data from government researchers, 61 percent of graduating high school seniors have had sex.

Of teens who take “virginity pledges,” 88 percent ultimately have premarital sex, according to Columbia University research cited by the Post.

RAMALLAH, West Bank
In an apparent bid to ease the way for possible peace in the Middle East, Palestinian-run TV and radio stations will ratchet down the rhetoric against Israel, officials announced last week.

Interim Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who has assumed leadership duties following the Nov. 11 death of Yasser Arafat, issued the call for restraint on state-run media, reported the Associated Press.

Israel, which long has complained that Palestinian media outlets encourage violence against Jews and Israel, tentatively welcomed the news, saying its merit “will be judged according to performance.”

Mahmoud Abbas’s push for more civility will lead to several reforms, including the taping and editing of talk shows now aired live, the pulling of old PLO fighting songs, and a request for more temperate content in sermons broadcast over the state-run airwaves.

The AP notes that while the changes are significant, they also might be mostly symbolic because most Palestinians eschew the state-run programs for satellite feeds from Al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya, or Lebanon’s Middle East Broadcasting Corp.

SANTA CLARA, California
A California-based software company last week offered its employees a $5,000 incentive to buy a fuel-efficient hybrid car that cuts down on the pollutants fueling global warming.

Hyperion Solutions CEO Godfrey Sullivan said he has budgeted $1 million a year for the next several years to fund the initiative, dubbed “Drive Clean to Dive Change,” according to press reports.

The incentive, offered on a first-come-first-served basis, covers only the small number of hybrid cars, which are powered by a combination of gas and battery, that get at least 45 miles per gallon and meet stiff emissions requirements, reported USA Today.

Hyperion will make the plan available to all of its 2,500 employees in 20 countries. The company, which makes business-performance-management software, employs 1,500 U.S. workers.

From the Conference Board:

“Median total compensation for outside (non-employee) directors of U.S. boards is higher than last year’s median in all three major industry sectors covered in The Conference Board’s annual study of outside director pay. The study is based on a survey of directors’ compensation and board practices in 510 companies.

“The oversight role of corporate boards is intensifying, resulting in significantly higher demands on board members. The chairmen of audit committees are especially under rising new pressures. These increased demands spurred the increase over the prior year of retainers paid to audit committee chairmen.

“In manufacturing, median total compensation for outside directors is now $72,750, up from $69,620 in 2003. The financial sector increased from $55,000 to $67,000. Services is $70,000 this year, up from $60,000 last year. (Total compensation includes all fees, retainers, committee pay, and annual, one-time or periodic grants of stock, restricted stock grants, and the value of stock option grants.)…

“Median total compensation for U.S. CEOs was also higher in all industries in 2003, the latest year for which data is available.

“‘There was generally good profit performance in 2003,’ says Charles Peck, The Conference Board’s compensation specialist and author of the report. ‘As a result, annual bonus plans, which are based on profitability, paid off well in many cases.’

“…Total CEO compensation (salary, bonus, and long-term compensation) was highest in the construction industry at $2,968,000. It was lowest in transportation at $988,000. Total current compensation (salary plus bonus) was also highest in construction at $2,445,000 and lowest in transportation at $646,000. Communications paid the highest median salary, $648,000. Lowest was telecommunications, which paid $405,000….”

“Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty. It is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.”

– Benjamin Franklin (U.S. statesman and philosopher, 1706-1790)