BEIRUT: As the so-called “Arab Spring” continues to spread across the region, the Lebanese should not be left behind in the struggle against endemic corruption, according to the Lebanese Transparency Association.

At the launch of Transparency International’s latest global campaign to crack down on corruption at the Press Federation in Beirut Tuesday, in collaboration with the LTA, Nada Abdelsater Abusamra, an LTA board member, said that “as a pioneer in the defense of freedom in the Arab world, the Lebanese should not be left behind in the movement that aspires to put an end to the impunity of their leaders.”

The LTA is the local chapter of Transparency International, which monitors and advocates against corruption. This new campaign, entitled “Time to Wake Up,” is the NGO’s first global operation following the outbreak of popular uprisings in the region and is being simultaneously piloted in four other countries alongside Lebanon, including Vietnam and Colombia.

Public perceptions of corruption in Lebanon are extremely high. In the latest global study conducted by TI, Lebanon ranked at 2.5 on a 0-10 scale – 0 being “highly corrupt” and 10 being “very clean” – and faring slightly better than Azerbaijan but worse than Eritrea.

Citing statistics that show 80 percent of people around the world perceive their government to be corrupt, with the same proportion of people doing nothing about it, the Time to Wake up campaign aims to communicate the human costs of corruption and motivate people to work against it.

The Time to Wake up campaign will include multimedia adverts and have an interactive presence on social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, and contain elements that focus on each individual country.

One of the Lebanon-specific videos features a witness testimony from one woman, describing the circumstances of her brother’s death, and explaining that the lack of wasta denied him a hospital bed.

When her brother was admitted to ER at a “very reputable hospital” in Lebanon, while she was in the U.S., he waited hours for a diagnosis, and a specialist doctor was unable to come to the hospital. He was then transferred to another hospital, where he died 30 minutes later.

The witness then called the first hospital, to inquire into the exact details surrounding her brother’s death. She was first informed that there were no beds available that night, but later discovered that this was not the case when the doctor in question called her back.

He said he had received a call asking him to come into work that evening and added: “Sorry, I didn’t know that the patient was your brother,” implying that had he known, he would have gone to the hospital.

The witness said that this tragic event inspired her to speak out. “Health care is a right that should be accessible to everyone, whoever he is and regardless of whether he has connections or not,” she said, adding that now was the “time to wake up” to corruption in Lebanon.

Gerard Zovighian, LTA’s chairman, said that the lack of democracy and the high levels of corruption were key catalysts in this year’s Arab Spring, which has already toppled governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, and is continuing to pressure the authorities in Syria and Yemen.

And while Lebanon’s “political regime is … far from being autocratic, [it] suffers from the congenital weakness of the state,” he said.

However, he added, in Lebanon “political and administrative corruption is as widespread as in other Arab countries which has devastating economic and social consequences,” he said.

Looking at Egypt and Tunisia as examples, where former presidents Hosni Mubarak and Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali are now facing trial for corruption, and “based on the principle that a fish rots from its head,” Zovighian said that the Arab Spring offered a unique occasion to end “the impunity enjoyed by corrupt Lebanese politicians and civil servants for too long.”

In a recent global study by the World Economic Forum, Lebanon ranked 140 out of 142 countries in terms of the public’s trust in politicians.

In the other Lebanon video, produced by the LTA, Abusamra explains the urgent need to fight corruption in Lebanon, as the pervasive culture of corruption leads people to take justice into their own hands and contributes to aggressive and violent behavior.

“If a person attacks you, or your children, perhaps you can’t go after him, because he has connections,” she said. “This prompts many to take revenge. The absence of a strong authority by the regulatory bodies drives people toward aggressive behavior,” she added.

This culture leads Lebanese to “always rely on and consider clientilism [as a solution],” Abdelsater Abusamra added.

Corruption, she said, “turns people into slaves of leaders who make the public believe that they are always in need of them to obtain the rights that are rightfully theirs.”