By Milos Djorelijevski ,
13:45,
Monday, 02 June 2008
Beta
Although the new Serbian government designated combating corruption as one of its five priority tasks, in the five months since the cabinet was formed not only has it taken no action on the issue but it has not even spoken of tackling corruption. Thus, no comment followed the publishing of Transparency International's annual report, which ranks 180 countries, including Serbia, based on their corruption perception index (CPI).
The latest report has brought Serbia somewhat up the ladder from last year's shared 90th place and 3.0 mark. Now, the country has for the first time found itself in the upper half of the scale and holds a shared 79th place with a 3.4 mark.
THE FIVE PRINCIPLES: The five priorities, that is five principles upon which members of the ruling coalition agreed during the three months of negotiations which preceded the creation of the current cabinet, are retaining Kosovo, European integration, cooperation with the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, economic prosperity, and fighting organized crime and corruption.
This result, however, can be deceiving, for experts warn that any grade below 4.0 denotes an "alarming level of corruption," while only a 5.0 mark means that corruption has been suppressed to acceptable levels.
Yet the progress has been visible. In 2003, Serbia had a 2.3 index, a year later it was 2.7, in 2005 it was not ranked due to insufficient research, and in 2006 its index was 3.0.
While presenting the CPI system in Belgrade, representatives of Transparency Serbia pointed out that such growth could, in part, be a result of certain repressive actions, namely the arrest and proceedings launched against the so-called `bankruptcy mafia,' given that foreign businesspeople often mentioned the Commercial Court, whose former president is now facing corruption charges, a problem point in Serbia's anti-corruption i.e. corruption system.
It is those very foreign businesspeople and investors whose voice, recorded through research and public opinion polls, counts most in calculating the current corruption perception index of any country.
On the other hand, the CPI calculation method has changed again, at least for Serbia. Since last year only the last two, instead of three, years of research have been taken into account, which increases the index of countries whose anti-corruption institutions and legislation are still in the works. The 3.0 mark from 2006 was for Serbia and Montenegro together, while this year Montenegro (CPI 3.3) and Kosovo were marked individually, although Kosovo did not enter the final list since only one research was conducted there.
Thus, Nemanja Nenadic from Transparency Serbia believes that the country's rating has improved due to the exclusion of territories with somewhat larger corruption problems, and only slightly on account of repressive measures employed against such crime. As far as perception and building a stable anti-corruption system is concerned, Nenadic claims little or nothing has been done.
The Serbian authorities missed the opportunity to at least mention the index jump, let alone explain what future steps are being planned in the fight against corruption.
Both the prime minister and president made no comments, despite having pledged to deal with the issue in their coalition agreement. Parliament's speaker in charge of European integration -- an impossible goal without a successful war on corruption -- who was finance minister in 2001 and 2003, when that ministry was responsible for fighting corruption, also remained mum, just as did the justice minister -- currently in charge of the anti-corruption struggle -- and the economy minister, whose party has announced it is preparing a set of anticorruption laws.
There are reasons why the authorities could take credit and state their plans because of the following:
Members of the State Auditing Agency's Council were finally elected, albeit with an 18 month delay, and it is now expected that they will enable the operation of this institution. The same happened with the office of the ombudsman, who was also elected more than 12 months after the deadline.
Changes in the system for preventing conflicts of interest are still awaiting the adoption of the Law on Combating Corruption; one version of the law envisages the law as regulating conflicts of interest in the financing of political parties, while the other as dealing with the formation of an anti-corruption agency exclusively.
Despite numerous meetings of the recently formed working group chaired by Radojko Obradovic (Democratic Party of Serbia), nothing has been done to bring more order into the area of political party financing. Only a new form for declaring election campaign costs was introduced. But this is also to no avail because the Parliament's Finance Committee showed little readiness to check and cross-check the submitted reports.
THE SITUATION IN THE REGION: Slovenia holds 27th place with a 6.6 index, which is far better than the mark of some EU members of much longer standing such as Italy (5.2) and Greece (4.6). The EU's two youngest members -- Romania and Bulgaria -- have improved their mark. Bulgaria now holds 64th place with a 4.1 index, while Romania made a jump of 0.6 points and is now at 3.7.
Croatia, too, made a large leap: last year its index was 3.4, while this year it shares 64th place and a 4.1 mark with Bulgaria and Turkey. Bosnia-Herzegovina made the same 0.4 point jump as Serbia, and is again only one step behind Serbia, sharing 3.3 points and 84th place with Montenegro, and Macedonia, which is new to the list.
Macedonia also made a huge step forward, considering that last year its index was 2.7. Out of countries in the region Albania is closest to the list's end -- it shares 105th place with 2.9 points, which is still an improvement from last year's 2.6.
The anti-corruption strategy is not being implemented either, nor is the Action Plan, the working group in charge of monitoring its implementation is not holding meetings, and no one is monitoring the implementation of GRECO's recommendations either despite the Dec. 31 deadline. The creation of an anti-corruption agency is still uncertain, although the previous government adopted a law and sent it for approval to Parliament prior to the Jan. 2007 elections. It is unclear whether the concept promoted then will be retained or whether the new cabinet will make some changes, given that G17 Plus, a party within the previous ruling coalition which adopted the previous law, is announcing a completely new anti-corruption initiative and set of laws. However, nothing is known of the results of their initiative and the negotiations with other parties on this matter.
The opposition is silent, too. It seems that there is some kind of consensus among the country's political elite that they should speak of corruption only during election campaigns, when no one has time to seriously question the mass of promises made, or check whether the politicians know what they are talking about.
In the region, however, there were reactions to the report. In Croatia, whose unchanged or declining index in the past few years had prompted Prime Minister Ivo Sanader to say that something was wrong with Transparency International and their methodology, the politicians said next to nothing but the local Transparency chapter commended the government.
Zorislav Antun Petrovic, the president of Transparency Croatia, said that the decrease of corruption in the country (with a CPI move from 3.4 to a respectable 4.1) was influenced by the adoption of an anti-corruption program and the beginning of its implementation. Also helpful, Petrovic added, were harsher penalties for corruption, the strengthening of the Office for Suppressing Corruption and Organized Crime (USKOK), and the formation of a new Conflicts of Interest Commission.
Montenegro, however, has adopted the Croatian principle and its blaming the mirror.
Thus Montenegro's Anticorruption Directorate Chief Vesna Ratkovic concluded that Transparency International's corruption research, which placed Montenegro in 85th place, was not conducted based on scientific methodology.
"Research that takes only perception into account is not research that is used in scientific methodology. Citizens' perception can point to there both being and not being corruption," she said, and added that although the report was not positive for Montenegro she will take it into account. Ratkovic said that she intends to conduct her own research based on U.N. Development Program methodology, which will deal with corruption in certain fields in a more comprehensive manner.
Ratkovic refuted the claims of Montenegro's non-government organization MANS, according to which there is not enough political will in the country to fight corruption. She said that part of the problem lies with the citizens, many of whom do not know what corruption is, "which is proved by the Directorate's open line which citizens call and often report cases of potential corruption, which in fact are not so."
Ratkovic announced that the Directorate will continue its propaganda campaign so as to explain to citizens what corruption is, and added that this year not only post-secondary but also secondary educational institutions would be included in the project.
Montenegrin Interior Minister Jusuf Kalamperovic met the CPI report with an enigmatic remark, saying that "there is far less corruption [in the country] than the gossip claims, but far more than is know to the public."
The Regulations and Reality section was made possible by Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Mission to Serbia. The OSCE Mission is funding all articles posted on this site.
Regulations and Reality takes a look at the implementation of the National Strategy on Fighting Corruption, approved in December 2005, the enforcement of anti-corruption laws passed in the last five years.
It also focuses on the effects of these laws, their limitations, errors that have appeared, and planned changes.
Every article created as part of the project is available free of charge to individuals and media outlets visiting the Argus website. The editors of Argus assume full responsibility for the views and information contained in each article. The articles do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the organizations supporting the project.
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