Review

Source: Blic

Politics, Comments 
Rodoljub Sabic, Commissioner for Information

The global anti-corruption network “Transparency International” has published its Global Corruption Perception Index (CPI) for this year. In what is probably the most relevant anti-corruption list, our country has scored 3.4 on a scale of 1 to 10 (same as last year) and is tied for places 85-92 among the total of 180 ranked countries. This score, far below the passing 5.0, is indicative of a country in which corruption is a systemic problem and effectively out of control. Our ranking in the CPI list puts us among countries which are, unfortunately, “proverbially” very corrupt. It is then clear that we should not and cannot be satisfied either with the score or with our ranking - indeed quite the contrary.  

And yet, something remains even more worrying than our score and rating in this year's CPI. We know we never actually “shined” on CPI. Since our country has been observed and scored, all the scores we received after 2000 were generally unsatisfactory. We started with an alarmingly low, literally catastrophic score 1.3. We were later improving and moving up from 2.4, 2.7, 2.8, 3.0, to the last year's 3.4. The progress was slow, unsatisfactory, but we were nevertheless progressing. This year, however, all this advancement, albeit at a snail's pace, appears to have stopped. This definitely calls for a review of everything that has been said and done by the competent authorities in the fight against corruption, with particular emphasis on what they failed to do.