Corruption watchdog, Transparency International, says that Poland has not got any less corrupt since joining the European Union last year.
From a survey based on responses from businesspeople, out of over 150 countries examined Poland ranks 70th least corrupt in the world (three places down on last year), but the most corrupt out of the 25 nations that make up the EU.
According to the report, Greece, Italy, the Czech Republic and Poland have performed relatively poorly in the last 12 months and "show little or no sign of improvement".
The report will surprise nobody, of course. The two election campaigns this autumn – for parliament and president – have been dominated by rightwing parties promising to clean Poland up after 4 years of rule by the ex-communist, SLD government. The Law and Justice and League of Polish Families have been calling for a complete clean sweep of government and civil service to get rid of corrupt, ‘communist’ elements.
Out of the post-communist countries to join the EU in May, 2004, Estonia is the least dodgy, says TI – influenced, they say, by the Nordic culture of strong civic society and good governmance.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Poland gets more corrupt
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7 comments:
Just to keep beating that dead horse, I'd say there's a non chance connection between attitudes toward cheating at school and corruption in the rest of society. That is, students who cheat and teachers who encourage/tolerate cheating have no business complaining when elected officials do the same thing. (sermon over)
It's not a dead horse, Mike, but one that is jumping happily around the field.
Between the top corruption of politicians, and the bottom nonsense of students cheating in class, there is a another layer of this crap. Want to pass your driving test but just can't seem to work that damn car properly? Then bung the examiner a few zloty...no probs. Want to get out of that speeding ticket? Ditto...Want to move quicker up the very long line waiting in hospital to have that operation? Then the underpaid doctor will be pleased to take the bung...
Zzzzzz
sorry but it's exactly indifferent attitudes toward cheating that foster the tolerance needed for corruption to gain a toehold in the mind's of children...
a society can have all the anti-corruption laws, speeches, political parties, and regulations it desires, but without early education and cultural support, those laws are incapable of preventing corruption...
and let's get introspective for a moment...do us citizen-bloggers have a responsibility or role in anti-corruption in Poland? can we? should we? do we see ourselves as passive carriers of news, or active participants who are making the news...?
I really do think citizen bloggers have a role...we are the new soap boxes in the town squares...in fact, blogging - when its at its best - is exactly the right place for this sort of thing!
A good subject for a post in fact...
If only more businesses joined this organisation:
http://www.manuspuris.pl/en-mp-homepage.htm
Cheers for that, Bialynia! manuspuris is the oddly named organization of businesspeople fighting against gorruption in Poland. The list of members is impressive: Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz (former head of central bank, now Civic Platform MP, Jan Nowak-Jeziorański (Polskie Radio and Radio Free Europe, who died this year)and journalists like Andrzej Sadowski. One name though will be greated by some with caution - Marek Belka, outgoing prime minister of the SLD government which has had one of the worst records of sleeze in post-communist history!
Just a mention in passing, I'm sort of starting a series on issues of corruption and Poland at my place.
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