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PRESS RELEASE
PUBLIC
INTEGRITY INITIATIVE
on ROMANIA
LAUNCH
THE PUBLIC INTEGRITY INITIATIVE IN ROMANIA
12/10/2000
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Transparency
International Romania
Pro Democracy Association
Media Monitoring Agency (Academia Catavencu)
Civil Society Development Foundation
LAUNCH
THE PUBLIC INTEGRITY INITIATIVE IN ROMANIA
12/10/2000
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Bucharest, October 12, 2000
Corruption is one of the most critical challenges that Romania is
facing. The public authorities acknowledge it by driving periodically
"anti-corruption campaigns". The media and the civil society
organizations attempting to raise public awareness on this detrimental
phenomenon pointed it out repeatedly. The citizens themselves resent
corruption as a persisting fact of their everyday life, as the recent
opinion polls
revealed.
Recently, the corruption in Romania was referred to by three
independent
sources: The Corruption Perception Index conducted by Transparency
International, the Nicholson report regarding the stage Romania
attained
in the European accession process (a report debated and adopted by the
European Parliament few days ago), and the study on the business
environment and the performance of enterprises, conducted by the EBRD
and the World Bank in 22 countries in transition. Every one
emphasizes,
in its distinct manner, the same reality: Romania is perceived, both
at
national and
international level, as a country where the public office is largely
abused for private gain.
The campaign for the general and presidential elections starts
officially today. Several thousands of Romanian citizens are ready to
ask their fellow citizens to entrust them the highest public offices.
This is the most appropriate time to remind everyone who competes for
the public trust that they will have to govern a society affected by a
pervasive corruption, which may undermine the confidence of the
Romanian
citizens in the most important democratic institutions.
At this time, Romania has political, administrative, and judicial
systems that favor corruption and inhibit integrity. This is a
cumulative consequence of delaying the enactment and the proper
enforcement of a legal framework regarding:
- transparency of public institutions through the free access to
information, as guaranteed by the Romanian Constitution;
- transparency of political parties and election campaign finances;
- eliminating the possibility of abuses against investigative
journalists who expose corruption cases;
- public access to the financial disclosure reports of the high public
officials;
- strict regulation of conflict of interests in all branches of
government ;
- concluding public procurement in strict observance of the principles
of transparency, free competition and effectiveness of public
spending;
- control of corruption in the privatization process;
- clear and publicized procedures of reporting corrup tion in every
public institution;
- use of adequate anti-corruption judicial instruments (whistleblowers
protection, use of "under-cover operations" etc)
- safeguarding the political independence of the anti-corruption
agencies.
Our organizations remind all the branches of government (legislative,
executive, and judicial) that adopting and implementing effectively
these standards is entirely their responsibility. Any delay or failure
in this respect will hold Romania at even more distance from the
standards of a public life based on integrity and will increase the
waste of resources, poverty and patronage generated by corruption.
We ask all political parties and all candidates engaged in the
election
campaign to explicitly assert their position and political options
towards the issues raised by this initiative, and to make known the
specific solutions they design for curbing corruption.
We strongly encourage our partners and colleagues from the media to
promote these topics in the public debate, both during and after the
election campaign.
By launching the PUBLIC INTEGRITY INITIATIVE, our organizations aim to
closely cooperate for monitoring and assessing the steps taken by the
Romanian authorities in adopting and implementing the standards of
integrity in the political, administrative, and economic life. The
PUBLIC INTEGRITY INITIATIVE represents a common platform for advocacy
and public campaign in favor of building a national integrity system
in
Romania.
Romanian Association for Transparency - ART
(Transparency International Romania)
Dragos Calitoiu
Chairman
Pro Democracy Association
Cristian Pirvulescu
Chairman
Media Monitoring Agency - Academia Catavencu
Mircea Toma
Vice Chairman
Civil Society Development Foundation
Dan Manoleli
Chairman
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