Warning: main(ezlink/user/menubox.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /var/www/ezpublish/sitedesign/standard/frame.php on line 164
Warning: main() [function.include]: Failed opening 'ezlink/user/menubox.php' for inclusion (include_path='/var/www/ezpublish/:/var/www/ezpublish/pear:.:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear') in /var/www/ezpublish/sitedesign/standard/frame.php on line 164
|
|
New Elections – New Cycle of Corruption
The financing of election campaign is the main source of any future corruption and should be made as transparent as possible, to avoid a situation in which the anonymous financiers will come to the political parties and demand favours in return for the support. Only a faction of the political parties have publicly disclosed their sources of financing and their greatest supporters in the business sector.
This was the main conclusion of the public debate “Elections as Corruption Generator”, organized by OHO and Transparency Macedonia, at the Members of Parliament Club last Thursday, June 22, 2006.
Gabriela Konevska from Transparency claims that each new election cycle actually means a new corruption cycle appears, due to the fact that old relations need to be preserved and new ones have to be established between business and political elites.
Konevska identified several potential sources of future corruption, inherent to all election processes. The first ‘opportunity’ is offered by the financing of political parties, which should become as transparent as possible.
“During the preparation of the existing legislation, everybody insisted on the anonymity of donors, because of fear of reprisals after the elections. The problem is, the anonymity is abused constantly”, says Konevska.
In her view, two other big sources of future corruption are the practices of politically dictated employment in public enterprises and the administration, as well as the trend to engage in a negative campaign instead of promotion of one’s own programme and platform, which results in the fact that citizens of Macedonia constantly vote “against” instead of “for” a political option.
Mihajlo Manevski, the Head of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, announced much more transparent elections, due to the general effort to follow the campaign more closely, but also to increased control and supervision by the international community, which has made it clear that it is interested only in absolutely impeccable and fair elections.
Miodrag Labovik, professor at the Police Academy in Skopje and author of several works on the fight against corruption asked “…how was it possible for somebody that uses ‘dirty’ money to fight the corruption?” He added that the anti-corruption stance of the political parties is only verbal and accused them of hypocrisy.
Dzevdet Hajredini focused on the start of the campaign in the Albanian bloc and the numerous violent incidents that erupted between activists of the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) and the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI). Hajredini believes that the new levels of violence are due to the fact that, for the first time since independence, the political parties of Macedonian Albanians are not focused on issues of collective rights and the campaign shifted its focus towards the economic benefits that the power brings with it.
The best presentation was given by Ljubomir Kekenovski, professor at the School of Economy at Skopje University. He first located the problem in the fact that corruption in Macedonia is not restricted to the level of phenomenon, which is present elsewhere in the world, throughout the history, but the corruption has become systemic and has penetrated all layers and segments of the society. In his view, the most dangerous development here is the so-called “mental corruption”, which means that the citizens accept the corruption as something that they can’t change, no matter what they do.
“Such citizens lack the capacity to enter partnerships, i.e. can’t appear as partners of the government, business or civil sector, or the international community, for that matter”, said Kekenovski and added that he fully understands the business community and the citizens.
„Both the firms and the citizens view the elections as a marketplace, as an investment that will return profits over the next four years. The firms expect economic benefits and possibility for expansion, the citizens want better life. That is only natural”, said Kekenovski. Like the other participants in the debate, Kekenovski repeated that the key lies with the transparent financing of political parties and campaigns.
|
|
|
|
