TI-Romania Survey : Public administration, political parties and business milieu, main culprits for corruption status
Date: 27-01-2012
Public administration, political parties and the business milieu are the main culprits behind the state of general corruption in Romania, those being also the main pillars of society, reveals the 'Survey on the National Integrity System,' launched by Transparency International Romania (TI-Ro) on Thursday. 'The excessively politicized public positions and the biased sharing of public resources to groups of interest are the main reasons leading to these conclusions. Corruption subdues freedom, leads to poverty, misinforms, denies access to justice and public services, affects health, degrades education and the future of young people,' said TI-Ro director Victor Alistar.
The survey reveals that the Romanian institutions do not possess the necessary resources and are not independent enough to cope with the political or group meddling, which trigger private benefits and corruption against the benefits of society.
The selective and extremely poor transparency render the responsibility mechanisms ineffective.
'Be it either political leaders, national or local, or the representatives of the public institutions, the people lost their confidence that the could be punished or promoted based on unbiased criteria, no matter if they are triggered by the controlling institutions, the press or the civil society. The TI-Ro survey also indicates that the exposure of several cases brought to justice does not represent a fair treatment of corruption as they relapse, but a systematic reform is necessary, one to create institutional 'antibodies' against corruption and one that should not treat only the symptoms but also the causes,' Victor Alistar said.
As regards the legislature, the survey claims that the high number of emergency ordinances of the Government and the procedure of taking responsibility in the Parliament led to the adoption of major regulations with no proper parliamentary debate. Moreover, the Parliament budget is spent too much to maintain an ineffective building and not too much to provide a legislative quality.
According to the Global Barometer of Corruption in 2010, the Parliament ranks jointly with the political parties as the most corrupted Romanian institution with a 4.5 out of 5 possible points, meaning that it is highly corrupted.
The same barometer in 2010 reveals that 34 percent of the Romanian people believe that the measures of the current government against corruption as being highly ineffective, and 25 percent believe they are ineffective.
TI-Ro mentions the high number of ministers and state secretaries involved in conflict of interests, influence peddling and other corruption-related felonies, leading to low figures for the executive regarding responsibility and integrity.
The corruption in the public sector is still considered by the Romanian people and the public authorities as a major issue of the national integrity system. With a score between 2.4 and 3.7 points (ranging from 1, not at all corrupted and 5, highly corrupted), the components of the public sector (education, medical aid, the tax service, the public and customs services) are still very afflicted by corruption.
The survey also reveals that the Police has one of the lowest rates of confidence among citizens, being an institution strongly affected by corruption and the disastrous perception regarding the integrity of its employees.
The performance of the Ombudsman is poor considering the tasks accomplished, as one can see a limit in the reaction of the institution and of the efforts made to performing the mission, although they receive a lot of complaints.
The political parties are deemed by the Romanian people as highly corrupted and non-transparent.
'With a difficult procedure to create new parties and an election threshold of 5 percent, the system of political parties in Romania is so designed as to maintain the current parliamentary parties forever. The legally available resources for a new party are so low that the real competition with the current parties is out of the question. The parties' transparency is rock bottom at the moment. All the experts of the Romanian parties believe that the groups of interests and the political patronage dominate the activity of the political parties,' according to another conclusion of the survey.
