With the Republika Srpska suing 9 people including US representative Raffi Gregorian for “conspiring against Republika Srpska” Bosnia seems to face a new crisis. Lajcak, Bosnia's top international envoy, immediately chose the old international strategy of parrying Serb actions with threats, saying "We don’t have to go back too far into the history to see how defying the international community usually ends up".
I think mr. Lajcak is missing the point here. This is not about ethnic conflicts - at least it should be. This is about the borders between a criminal investigation and a political abuse of judicial powers. The rude reaction of mr. Lajcak suggests that he may very well be on the wrong side of the fine line between those two positions:
- If anything, the Federation in Bosnia is considered more rather than less corrupt than the RS. This raises the question why we hear only about such investigations regarding the RS.
- Parliamentary democracies generally know legal immunity for top politicians. Now, in the rather unsettled situation of Bosnia Dodik is not officially on the top level but he is the leader of one of the main political currents in the country, so some judicial restraint is justified. Specially from foreigners.
That doesn't mean that corruption shouldn't be addressed. But it does imply that care should be taken not to confuse the fight against corruption with politics. There are many ways to achieve that.
Will this restraint harm the fight against corruption? I don't think so. On the contrary, it prevents the fight against corruption from becoming politicized. Such politization only increases corruption as the focus comes on a few high-profile cases and politicians start to see the fight as a political tool rather than as a good cause.
As for Dodik, the main goal should be to have him behave more honest, not on getting him behind bars or out of office. He is a politician for a part of Bosnia's Serbs. They should decide when he has to give up his position. The international community should instead focus on the monetary aspect. They have given money to Bosnia and if Dodik is wasting some of that they should insist that transactions are turned back or money is paid back.
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Organized crime in Croatia
I don't follow Croatia very much, but I always thought it was a little closer to Europe than Serbia. So my surprise when I read this article:
Yet a Croatian panelist, Natasha Srdoc from the pro-free-market Adriatic Institute of Public Policy, denounced the "very soft report" published by the European Commission earlier this month on the progress of her country.
She criticised the perspective of concluding negotiations by the end of 2009 - a schedule suggested by enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn, and denounced the recent contract killings of critical journalists, and the "widespread corruption" noted in the commission report.
She also warned of the strength of organised crime in the country, saying there was a "much stronger underground network than in Serbia, [and this] includes the intelligence services."
"There is not enough pressure now to reform before accession to the EU and NATO. Once a country is in the EU, the chances for reforms are lost," Ms Srdoc said, demanding "international monitoring" of Croatia, as the authorities were, in her view, incapable of dealing with these challenges.
Is this just an extreme view? Let me know your opinion!
Yet a Croatian panelist, Natasha Srdoc from the pro-free-market Adriatic Institute of Public Policy, denounced the "very soft report" published by the European Commission earlier this month on the progress of her country.
She criticised the perspective of concluding negotiations by the end of 2009 - a schedule suggested by enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn, and denounced the recent contract killings of critical journalists, and the "widespread corruption" noted in the commission report.
She also warned of the strength of organised crime in the country, saying there was a "much stronger underground network than in Serbia, [and this] includes the intelligence services."
"There is not enough pressure now to reform before accession to the EU and NATO. Once a country is in the EU, the chances for reforms are lost," Ms Srdoc said, demanding "international monitoring" of Croatia, as the authorities were, in her view, incapable of dealing with these challenges.
Is this just an extreme view? Let me know your opinion!
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Corruption in Kosovo
The American Chamber of Commerce in Kosovo has published a report about coruption in Kosovo and its impact of the busisness community. Unfortunately it is only the result of a questionnaire among businesses. It misses individual observations that would have given taste to the dry figures.
Most interesting I found the differences between Serb and Albanian businesses. Serb businesses have much more problems with the KEK (40%) and the Cadastre (30%), allthough the KEK is impopular with the Albanians too. But no institution get complaints of more than 15% of the Albanians.
Update: New Kosova Report has an elaborate interview with Avni Zogiani from the anti-corruption NGO COHU. He comments on the findings by saying that corruption is invisible because it is mainly in the political arena. All the checks and balances that should keep politics honest are simply not there.
Most interesting I found the differences between Serb and Albanian businesses. Serb businesses have much more problems with the KEK (40%) and the Cadastre (30%), allthough the KEK is impopular with the Albanians too. But no institution get complaints of more than 15% of the Albanians.
Update: New Kosova Report has an elaborate interview with Avni Zogiani from the anti-corruption NGO COHU. He comments on the findings by saying that corruption is invisible because it is mainly in the political arena. All the checks and balances that should keep politics honest are simply not there.
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