the quest for change

Friday 02 February 2007

Last week we had the visit of one of our Slovakian members: Mr. Peter Kopecky, current diplomacy professor at the Bratislava University and former ambassador of Slovakia in Bucharest. During his stay, Mr. Kopecky told us a little bit about �democracy� in Slovakia, which he described as a transitional democracy with a political sphere completely bound to economic forces.

Although there is a multiparty system few things have changed in the Slovakian political framework since the communist era. According to Mr. Kopecky, the political sphere is handicapped by secret cooperation agreements between the parties succeeding each other. This collusion has the effect that the money that was before wasted by one party is now shared between several parties, but no improvement has occurred in terms of management. Moreover, the leading parties are brought to power by wealthy economic groups (e.g. Penta) and lobbies (e.g. the nuclear lobby supports the actual Prime Minister Fico). During this process, important sums are spent and a lot of money is distributed to the parties in order to ensure favourable policies afterwards. Former leading party SDKU was accused to detain 22 Million unjustified Slovakian crowns.

According to Slovakian law, the institutions of public interest must be independent of any political color, but �everyone knows that the director of the public television is the man of Slovakian Prime Minister Fico�, Kopecky says. The administration is undermined by client�lisme and nepotism, functions in independent bodies like the commissions or the industry surveillance council are entrusted to sympathizers and not specialists. As a result, some services of public interest are denied to opponent on the only base that they disagree with the government. Under former government, Mr. Kopecky was trying to get credits to publish his book: �Diplomacy, a public concern?� His application was rejected by the Commission of the Medias on the unavowed reason that it was too critical against the government and particularly the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Corruption in Slovakia takes various forms and despite some attempts to create an independent multiparty state, Slovakia�s state is mainly controlled by economic lobbies. Like many other states in the cradle of democracy called Europe, the �rule by the people� often means �rule by some people�, and what is sold as democracy is in reality oligarchy!