Source: Danas
Serbia repeats poor score and low rating in global corruption list
Personal Opinion
Recently, some ten days before the publication of the Global Corruption Perception Index (CPI), probably the most relevant corruption ranking list in the world published by the anti-corruption network of non-governmental organization Transparency International simultaneously in more than 180 countries from all continents, I ventured to publicly forecast our country's ranking in this year's index.When this year's Global Corruption Perception Index was published on 23 September this year, the results confirmed my forecast. I have to say I am, quite understandably, not pleased in the least to see my prediction proven true. I forecasted it was unlikely our country would improve its score compared with the previous year. And the last-year's score, although our best achievement so far in CPI, still remains unsatisfactory and groups us among countries in which corruption is a systemic problem.
In view of the foregoing, I said that our country's score in this year's CPI should in any case give rise to a serious review of what the government has done within the framework of its anti-corruption efforts, with particular emphasis on what it failed to do. After the publication of the index, I am convinced this is literally crucial.
Thus, in this year's Global Corruption Perception Index, our country has scored 3.4 on a scale of 1 to 10 and is tied for places 85-92 among the total of 180 ranked countries. This score is far below 5.0 as the first passing mark and it is reserved for countries in which, as I have said before, corruption is a serious, systemic problem. In terms of ranking, we are tied with Montenegro, Albania, Senegal, Panama, Madagascar and India. Quite obviously, these are countries that are “proverbially” and chronically known as highly corrupt. In brief, then, it is clear that we should not and cannot be satisfied either with our ranking or with our score - which is far more important.
Both the score and the rating undoubtedly give rise to grave concerns. However, I think that another issue deserves far more attention in this context. The score and rating are bad but we never actually “shined” on CPI. Since our country has been observed and scored, all the scores we received after 2000 were, as I have said before, very unsatisfactory. We started as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with an alarmingly low, literally catastrophic score 1.3 we inherited from Miloaevi. We were later improving and moving up from 2.4, 2.7, 2.8, 3.0, to the last year's 3.4, which is the best score we received so far, but it remains a bad score. The progress has been slow and tedious. Once in, it is difficult to extract oneself from the cesspool and this is why any progress, even at the smallest pace, is invaluable. And continuity of such progress is even more important.
In this context it is interesting that this year we have repeated the last year's score of 3.4. The score is not worse, but neither is it better than last year, not even by one per mile. For the first time since 2000 there was no improvement and this is a phenomenon that cannot be ignored. If something was valuable and encouraging in this succession of objectively bad scores, it was the fact that we managed to improve - only just - those scores from year to year. The improvement was very slow, but evident. We were moving forward, albeit at a snail's pace. This year's score shows that this advancement has stopped. It is a very serious warning and more than a good reason to reconsider the concept on which the fight against corruption in our country is based.
We have passed many normative anti-corruption instruments, laws, strategies, plans, ratified international conventions, became a member of nearly all international anti-corruption associations and introduced several anti-corruption institutions in our system. But the other side of the coin is that virtually all these new anti-corruption institutions have been operating for years under inadequate conditions, while some of the most important ones are in a situation bordering on catastrophic or have no conditions for their operations at all. And the Government, the executive authority, which is responsible for ensuring these conditions, has all but failed to take any notice. What lies at the root of this issue?
It is understandable, logical even, that the desire to achieve the strategic objective of EU association and accession emphasizes, willy-nilly, the need to pass a large number of laws we still do not have. The same applies to anti-corruption activities. However, without the slightest intention of questioning the importance of adopting new laws, the notorious truth that laws by themselves cannot yield any results, least of all the desired ones, should not be ignored. To quote but an example: we have had a Law on State Audit Institution for three years now, but the institution as such still does not exist in its full and real capacity and, consequently, none of the benefits of its existence have been felt as yet. This and other laws can produce their intended effects only if the institutions responsible for enforcing them have both sufficient powers and sufficient working conditions.
Speaking of our run towards the EU, it might be interesting to make a comparison with the neighbouring Croatia, which is also running in the same direction. In connection with the publication of the CPI, Hans Svoboda, Rapporteur of the European Parliament for Croatia, warned that corruption was slowing Croatia's way to Europe. And Croatia has passed and ratified more or less all necessary laws and international conventions. More importantly, its anti-corruption institutions operate in conditions which are much, much better than those in Serbia. As a result, Croatia scored 4.4 in this year's CPI. The advantage expressed by this score in comparison with our 3.4 should be seen in the fact that it took Serbia half a decade to improve by one index point, from 2.4 to 3.4. The conclusion is, I believe, self-evident.
What we need are fast and sound anti-corruption results. They are achievable, but not easily so. This can only be done if the focus of anti-corruption activities shifts from the abstract to the real plain. The author is the Commissioner for Information
