Bosnia and Herzegovina is again placed among the countries that are
This was pointed out yesterday at the press conference of Transparency International in BiH (TIBiH), at which the leaders of this association presented the findings and indicators of the global report on the CPI for 2020.
As the executive director of TIBiH, Ivana Korajlic, said, BiH, unfortunately, has been declining on the CPI scale for several years now and this year it got the worst position in the Western Balkans region and shares a place with North Macedonia.
She added that the ubiquitous phenomenon of corruption is accompanied by human rights violations, which is confirmed by seven sources/relevant research measuring the perception of corruption in the public sector by experts and the business community, focusing on trends in the context of certain countries’ ability to fight with corruption, BHRT writes.
According to the presented indicators, Slovenia is the best positioned in our region with a score of 60, followed by Croatia 47, Montenegro 45, Serbia 38 and Kosovo 36, while globally the best-positioned countries are Denmark, New Zealand, Finland, while the war-torn countries, that are experiencing lawlessness and dictatorship, such as Venezuela, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, and South Sudan, got the worst score this year.
When it comes to the general recommendations from the Report of the CPI, Korajlic states that they are mostly related to strengthening institutional oversight, transparency of public procurement, which is especially problematic this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Maintenance of democratic mechanism, publishing all data from the domain of public spending, and distribution of public resources were also mentioned as the recommendations.
The Chairman of the Board of Directors of TIBiH, Srdjan Blagovcanin, warned that BiH is continuously moving in the wrong direction and that authorities in BiH have not made progress on any of the 14 priorities on the European path, and especially those related to the rule of law and the anti-corruption fight.
He said, at the same time, that if the country continues this trend of rapid decline, it risks escalating the crisis to complete institutional paralysis, which is further multiplied in the combination with the economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the completely dark face of corruption.
Blagovcanin reminds that there was no institutional response to the scandals present in the public, whereby the judiciary, which was supposed to fight the corruption, actually became a “burning issue”.
The situation in the judiciary proves that it is completely incapable of prosecuting political corruption and is trapped by the interests of the ruling structures, said Blagovcanin, emphasizing the need for radically judicial reform, including vetting, ie detailed examination of all officials at judicial positions, as well as restoring citizens’ trust in judicial institutions – said Blagovcanin.
