Integrity – The Virtue of Virtues 32126.5 Integrity and Power
The greatest challenge facing integrity is power. From the ethical
point of view, power in itself is neither negative nor positive. I.e. power
is necessary and positive when it helps to implement objectives, values
and virtues and to keep promises.
One can only be responsible of something if one has the empower-
ment to take action: the power of knowledge to make the right decision,
the power of money, to support the right action, the power of network,
to set up alliances to gain the majority for consensus in problem solving
(for instance political coalition dialogue in the RDC’s “Inclusive Na-
tional Dialogue” on elections), the power of telecom for discourse and
unity of the community, and so on.
But these powers may be misused if those who are empowered are
not controlled by others. This is due to the fact that, even the most ethi-
cal person, who is by definition of a human being not perfect, can make
mistakes or be tempted to make use of their charisma and their means.
In the Christian language, each human being is a sinner and needs cor-
rections from others. A truthful woman or a truthful man is not unfail-
ing, but he/she is aware of his/her own temptations (e.g. temptation of
power abuse) and seeks help and supervising control. It is why there
must be distribution of tasks and powers among the five powers of a
State at the legislative, executive, judiciary, media and civil society lev-
els.
The Bible contains many texts about temptation. The most famous
one concerns Jesus. As a human being, Jesus was tempted by power and
wealth, in order to teach us how to avoid them. He became more truthful
through this “rite of passage” at the beginning of his public life. Another
example is Sirach’s advice during the violent struggle of the Maccabees
riot in 167 A.D., a call for resisting to rebellion against the political or
judiciary power to those who are not strong enough: “If you do no