Source: : Danas
Rodoljub Sabic
Personal attitude
A recent statement of Drago Kosa, president of GRECO (Group of countries for fight against corruption SE), has attracted attention from the public, with a good reason. A main reason should not be fearing the potential threat of effectuation of a so called procedure for uncooperative countries. Declaration, indeed contains a warning in case our country fails to fulfill recommendations from the biggest anti-corruption initiative, it could face being subjected to this procedure, as well as possible unpleasant diplomatic and other consequences. However, that threat is not too real. There were other countries with similar problems in implementation of recommendations of GRECO, but I guess, only one was pronounced officially uncooperative (Georgia). However there are strong domestic reasons in favor of paying a full attention to a declaration of the President of GRECO. Because, volens nolens, it talks about the fact that we should not be putting our heads in the sand when facing a phenomena telling us that they are characteristic to our „anticorruption concept“. First is the obvious gap between results of the enactment compared to the realistic plan.. Results in production of enactment and action documents are much” better” than anti corruption results in real life. Concerning this, vivid are recommendations of GRECO XIII, XV and XXV, which anticipate introduction and implementation of action plan for national strategy implementation for fight against corruption and introduction into a system the two very important institutions - the Ombudsman and the State Auditing Institution . Recommendation no. XIII „has been realized“ through adoption of the Action Plan. Implementation of this plan was supposed to have been supervised by the Agency, whose establishing was anticipated by the Strategy itself, but was never done. The Government opted, as a transitional solution, to establish a Multi Department board, but the necessary work conditions for its operation were not established, and of course it is not functional. Also recommendations XV and XXV have, pertaining to enactment, been realized long time ago, because the Law on Ombudsman and State Auditing Institution were introduced two years ago. But, they are actually not operational yet. Considering all realistic and hypothetical problems regarding provision of financial, material, logistic conditions for commencement of operation of anticorruption government body, it is more than obvious that there was more than enough time for solving these problems and mishaps as these could be “explained” by the people in charge in many ways, but without genuine justification. The other relevant phenomena is almost ignoring connection to experiences of others which suggest that the best results in the fight against corruption can and must be searched for on two plans, both of which are neglected here. First is in the plan of visibility, namely publicity of administrative procedures, accessibility of information on public proceedings of the public authority, various models of exterior control, not only courts and parliament, but foremost the media, journalists and citizens. Also, on the training plan and preparation for implementation of new standards of government-public rapport, on rights of the public in democratic society and responsibility of the government, as well as training for the purpose of adopting new knowledge and skills, i.e. standards, methods and procedures which are applied for the purpose of fight against corruption, in countries with far better results. In that context the situation with recommendations I and XIV is illustrative. Recommendation talks of the need of improvement of implementation of the Law on public procurement, particularly through undertaking of training for government officials which participate in the process of public procurements, and recommendation XIV entails undertaking of training for public officials on rights of the public entitled by the Law on free access to public significance information, and implementation of a campaign for informing general public with the content of this law. Even though the Laws on public procurements and free information access are not new any more, since they have been introduced several years ago, and training of personnel is a government duty, since now, only two government bodies have dealt with training of employees, with the cooperation of civil sector; Directory of Public Procurement and Commissioner for public significance information. At the same time, the two bodies are lacking by far in personnel, logistic, material and other potential which would enable them to perform their regular duties, not to mention an adequate program of training which would at least cover the most relevant government bodies. The circumstances of this being well known , and still the requests of all government bodies in obtaining necessary conditions for carrying them out, are not met. Situation being as it is, it's not good that so far, the only reaction to a warning statement of President of GRECO was a hint of introduction of several more anti-corruption laws. It is certainly not disputed that, not only several new laws need to be introduced in continuity, but also ratification of all corresponding international documents. However, this only makes sense with full awareness of the fact that simply that, on itself means nothing, and it can not yield necessary results. Adoption of the law, without real life conditions for its implementation and without a responsible analyses of this implementation, as well as undertaking of international obligations without a genuine will to execute them, shall bring no good. On the contrary. For, the struggle against corruption is not on paper, but in real life terrain. The whole point of it, is to be better, on the corruption index , than Surinam or Gabon or Bosnia or Macedonia, regardless. The point is, to make ourselves better, as much as we can.
