HUNGARIANS BELIEVE THEIR POLITICIANS ARE CORRUPT

When Transparency International issued its report on election spending on Monday the section that captured the headlines was that showing that Fidesz would spend over double the legal limit – and get away with it. Fidesz stayed quiet on this revelation but needless to say the opposition parties took to the social media immediately.

However the last paragraphs of the report were ignored by all the parties. The simple reason for that is rightly or wrongly the majority of Hungarians believe their politicians are corrupt.

Commissioned by TI, the polling agency Psyma assessed public attitudes concerning the campaign. The findings show that only 8 per cent of the people expect a clean campaign, assuming that the parties will only make use of legal means before the elections. The conclusion has to be that up to 92 per cent did not.

According to the poll, the majority of the public thinks that both the ‘left-wing alliance to change the government’ (62 per cent) and Fidesz-KDNP (55 per cent) use funds from corrupt sources in their campaign, and every second person thinks the same about the far right Jobbik.

TI, the watchdog association K-Monitor and the investigative online portal Atlatszo.hu (Hungarian for ‘transparent’) believe an anti-corruption minimum programme is needed and it is in everybody’s interest to have one.

They have developed their anti-corruption minimum programme which can be found at www.ezaminimum.hu. The recommendations of the programme have been drawn up so that a quarter of a century after the political transition Hungarians can finally take substantial measures against the misuse of public funds.

The aim is to gain the support of decision-makers with influence on legislation, and the broadest possible non-governmental cooperation for this initiative, overwriting political lines.

The programme makes recommendations primarily in the areas of party and campaign financing, public procurement, asset declarations, conflict of interest/revolving door, the management of national assets, and the rule of law.

Sándor Léderer, director of K-Monitor stated: “The country and the legislation have changed significantly over the past 25 years, but now breakthrough has been achieved in the fight against corruption.” 

TI and its partners argue that corruption causes immeasurable economic and societal damages; its elimination therefore needs to be in the interest of all political actors. No party striving to get into the parliament can afford to ignore this problem said Sándor Léderer.

Tamás Bodoky, the editor in chief of the portal reported: “The website atlatszo.hu is receiving reports uncovering wrongdoing linked to the election campaign.” He added that all substantiated reports will be dealt with using the tools of fact finding and investigative journalism.

Of course political corruption is not restricted to Hungary but is European wide. Surveys in Spain have shown that around 90 per cent of people questioned believed both their politicians and political system was corrupt. It is a perception the EU urgently needs to tackle across all member States.

(The above article was published in the London Progressive Journal on March 21 2014)

SPANIARDS BELIEVE THEIR POLITICAL PARTIES ARE CORRUPT

The article based on the findings from Transparency International on its Global corruption Barometer was squeezed in at the bottom of the Spanish newspaper. This isn’t because the editor thought it unimportant it is just that the reports on the various corruption cases engulfing the centre right Partido Popular left little space.

Likewise there just isn’t space in this article to even given an overview of such cases as “Gürtel” and “Bárcenas”, which lead to the very top of the governing PP. However I will mention that Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is pretending the “Bárcenas” case, revolving around former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas and his numerous secret accounts abroad, simply did not happen. This despite Rajoy possibly being a beneficiary of part of these funds and refusing to sack Bárcenas when he took over from José María Aznar. Meanwhile Aznar has offered to come back and save the nation from the crisis and Rajoy even though Bárcenas was his treasurer and the Aznar links to this corruption case go very deep indeed. The PP now has major figures such as Esperanza Aguirre calling on Rajoy to recognise the irregularities and to undertake an internal party reform – “because Spain needs a clean PP”. Some hope.

Aguirre was speaking inside the PP’s regional executive meeting in Madrid. Outside were some 500 protestors calling for Rajoy to resign. There were cries of “PP, thieves, we want resignations” and “Rajoy and Cospedal, to Soto del Real”, Cospedal is the secretary general of the PP and president of Castilla-La Mancha regional government: the Soto del Real a prison where Bárcenas is being held.

So what does the Spanish man and woman on the street make of all this? Not a lot: indeed the majority view political corruption as being one of the major problems facing Spain.

In the CIS opinion polls in 2013 corruption has been at either number two or three in the preoccupations of Spaniards. This has been borne out by the Transparency International Global Barometer with 114,000 people being questioned in 107 countries.

According to Transparency International Spain is one of the countries where corruption is perceived to be “a very serious problem”. Spain scores 4.5 out of 5 on the corruption rating whereas the international average is 4.1. Spain is also third amongst European countries where corruption is a major concern to citizens after Greece and Portugal.

Nor has the corruption stopped: indeed Spaniards believe it has grown since 2011. Two out of three Spaniards questioned were indignant over the corruption levels (the famous “Los Indignados” of street protests) which is far higher than the international average of 53 per cent.

Spaniards are in no doubt of where the corruption lies. A staggering 83 per cent point to the political parties followed closely by Parliament itself. In contrast the worldwide view is that the major focuses of corruption are the police and civil servants – public employees and not politicians.

The problem for Spain’s political parties is that it is not just the Partido Popular that is immersed in sleaze. The opposition socialist PSOE, which has its own numerous corruption cases, is viewed in a similar light. Hence PSOE’s reluctance to try and force the PP to call an election over the Bárcenas scandal. The socialists have called on Rajoy to resign but for the PP to stay in government.

One party to be viewed favourably is Izquierda Unida which has been picking up votes largely at the expense of PSOE. However even the IU’s hands are not clean with recent corruption scandals in two small municipalities on the Costa del Sol – Casares and Manilva – which have in recent years seen the far left party in control of their respective town halls.

(The above article appeared in the London Progressive Journal on July 11 2013 with versions in other publications). 

URGENT CALLS FOR TRANSPARENCY IN BULGARIA’S GENERAL ELECTION

On Sunday May 12 Bulgaria will hold its general election. The outcome will not only be closely awaited by the people of that country but by fellow EU States and organisations such as Transparency International, which has been monitoring corruption in Bulgaria for over a decade.

The President of the Party of European Socialists, Sergei Stanishev, is also the leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party and a former Bulgarian Prime Minister. After the election was called he stated: “During the last presidential and local elections in 2011 the ruling right wing party GERB committed a huge number of violations and fraud. Now they have introduced changes in the Electoral code in a way that hinders the transparency of the election process and creates prerequisites for distortion and frankly substitution of results, while refusing to incorporate a number of OSCE (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) recommendations.” He added that other socialist party leaders he spoke to were incredulous when he said vote rigging was possible in an EU member State.

This wasn’t the case of a socialist leader calling “foul” before the event. Transparency International has a special team dedicated to monitoring the General Election. TI says: “The most significant challenges that we have identified to persist in the electoral process in Bulgaria are vote-buying and controlled vote, which are clearly a product of the socio-economic conditions in country being taken advantage by both political and criminal actors.” Indeed in the 2011 presidential and local elections 12 per cent of Bulgarians told Transparency International they would sell their votes with nearly 60 per cent of those saying they would do so because of their poverty.

Yet the problems for Bulgaria go much deeper than that. It is not just the GERB ruling party bringing in corrupt practices although there is clear evidence of that. For instance there have been allegations of illegal phone tapping which are linked to Tzvetan Tzvetanov, the former Minister of the Interior who is now the Director of Elections for the GERB party. However Bulgaria has been behind the game all along in making the transition from Communist single party to democratic state.

One of the many Transparency International reports on Bulgaria states: “The problem of corruption became a central political and social concern in Bulgaria towards the end of the 1990s, and since then has topped the governmental agenda. Despite the prioritization of the issue, Bulgaria has systematically demonstrated very high levels of perception of corruption: according to the TI Corruption Perception Index (2011) it is the lowest scoring country in the EU. If there is a trend in this regard, it is rather negative.”

Now Bulgaria became a member of the EU in 2007 when the concerns of the corruption and lack of transparency in political and institutional bodies was well known. I have no problem with Bulgaria becoming a member of the EU: I would however argue that this should have happened after the country had clearly demonstrated that its political parties and institutions were fully transparent. Until that status had been achieved, and we are still far from that situation, then Bulgaria should have been helped along the path to membership by the EU and then admitted. 

On April, 4 an Integrity Pact for Free, Fair and Democratic Election in Bulgaria was signed. The document is elaborated by 8 non-governmental organizations, including Transparency International, all of which will conduct independent civil monitoring of the forthcoming general election.

Transparency International states: “The main objective of the Pact is to commit the political parties to the conduct of election campaigns in accordance to the standards for transparency and accountability, and to the implementation of measures preventing violations of the citizens’ voting rights.”

This is a positive step but the question still remains: why should such steps be even necessary in an EU Member State?

Under the pact the Bulgarian political parties are committing themselves to:

To nominate for members of the Precinct Electoral Commissions candidates with experience in the organization of the electoral process, professional preparation, high personal moral and reputation;

To increase the competence of its representatives to the electoral commissions by conducting additional training with regard to the rules of the electoral process;

To carry out information campaigns against vote-buying, controlled vote and the negative effects on the voters’ rights, and the democratic process in the country;

To ensure public access to information about the number of proxy representatives, by making it available on their websites;

To ensure greater transparency of their elections campaign financing by providing timely information to the National Audit Office, with regard to received donations throughout the campaign;

To assist the independent observers - representatives of the Civil Coalition for Monitoring of the Electoral Process in their efforts to monitor the campaign financing and Election Day developments.

  But it is not just the political parties that are involved but the non-governmental organizations too. They have committed themselves to:

To conduct independent civil monitoring of the electoral process in accordance to the internationally established standards;

To observe the principles of political impartiality, transparency and integrity in the monitoring process;

To carry out information campaign among the Bulgarian citizens with regard to their participation of the electoral process, institutional responsibilities, and negative effects of vote-buying and controlled-vote;

To inform the Bulgarian public and European institutions about the results of the conducted monitoring

To formulate proposal for amendments in the legislation and the practice of the Bulgarian institutions, aiming to enhance transparency and integrity in the Elections to the European Parliament, as well as to offer its expertise to the responsible institutions.

   
It is quite clear from the Integrity Pact for Free, Fair and Democratic Election that democracy has been seriously abused in Bulgaria and political corruption is rife. However I would firmly argue the blame for this appalling situation rests not only with the government in Sofia, which it surely does, but equally with the EU in Brussels too because it has failed to insist on free and fair elections in Member States.

 

(The above article was published in the London Progressive Journal on May 1 2013)

SPAIN IS THE MOST CORRUPT NATION IN THE EU

Let me give you that statement again. Spain is the most corrupt nation in the EU. Who says so? The people of Andalucía!

That is the finding of an opinion poll carried out by the Instituto Commentia to coincide with the autonomous region’s national day – Día de  Andalucía. It reveals that 73.6 per cent of people questioned in Andalucía believe their country is the most corrupt in the EU. This compares with 1.8 per cent who believes that corruption in their country is not so serious.

Indeed 65.5 per cent of people in this region believe that Spain is now living through the most serious crisis since the days of the Transition following the death of Franco. They single out both political and economic fraud. Spaniards believe their politicians are more corrupt than the rest of society. In that assessment they see no difference between the centre right Partido Popular and the centre left PSOE.

The messages to the Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, over the Bárcenas scandal are mixed. Luis Bárcenas, the former Partido Popular treasurer, is alleged to have made illegal, secret payments to party officials. He is also said to have amassed million of euros in off-shore bank accounts. The percentage of those asked who believe that Rajoy should resign now is 27.3 per cent. The leader of the opposition PSOE, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, has made such a demand and support for Rajoy to go is highest amongst socialist voters. However the same number believe Rajoy should stay and clean up his party whilst 39.5 per cent believe any decision on his future should await the findings of the various investigations.

The soundings would also indicate a massive loss of trust by the people of Andalucía in the institutions of State. The biggest suffer has been the monarchy with just 34.9 per cent giving it an approval rating compared with 63 per cent in 2010.

The positive ratings for the justice system is 21.1 per cent, the Andalucía Parliament 20.3, the Andalucía Government 18.6, the Spanish Parliament 18.1, the Spanish Government 17.3, the Unions 13.7, the Cajas de Ahorros savings banks 10.9, the economic system 8.7 and the banks just 7.7 per cent.

Indeed Spaniards in Andalucía have confidence in only one institution. The armed forces and State security, being the various police forces. They command a 71.5 per cent approval rating.

It has to be said this is a chilling finding. If the people of Andalucía and may be the rest of Spain have no faith in their Royal family, governments, political parties, financial system and only value their armed forces and police that indeed raises the spectre of a Franco figure emerging from those ranks to save the nation.

With a non-conscript army and the nation embracing democracy since the death of Franco the days of a coup d’état in Spain should be firmly in the past. However Spain is a nation in despair and its support of its politicians and its institutions has collapsed. In that event we have to be very wary indeed of those in the military whose ambitions extend further than the parade ground and would march straight in to the Palacio Real crushing the government and Royal Family as they go.

(The above article appeared in the London Progressive Journal on March 6 2013)