Thieves of opportunity

Opportunity makes a thief, Francis Bacon said. If politicians steal from the people or wantonly violate traffic laws, it's partly because they can. Who wouldn't accept an envelope under the table if there were little chance of getting caught? Well, not everyone. A study of parking tickets received by U.N. diplomats in New York City found a close correlation between bad parking and corruption as measured on a larger scale by Transparency Int. The Economist said that diplomats from countries with low levels of corruption behaved well even when they could get away with breaking the rules. So how did the CR fare? According to the study, Czech diplomats were the 36th-worst offenders and received more tickets per person than diplomats from Lesotho or Botswana and the same number as diplomats from Niger. Opportunity does, it seems, make a Czech official a thief. [Czech Republic United Nations United States International]