Friday, September 14, 2007

Corruption Pervades Government in Bosnia

A sobering look at the situation in contemporary Bosnian government:

IN DEPTH: Auditors Lambast Culture of Corruption in Bosnia

While I had expected that the top-heavy, multi-layered nature of Bosnia's cumbersome governmental structure would be an important factor in enabling corruption in Bosnia, it seems that the problem is more deeply rooted in the central government than in either of the two entity governments. This cannot be good news for any efforts to rewrite Bosnia's constitution in favor of greater centralized control, since public support for the central government will most certainly be affected by perceptions of the current system.

Still, one can hope that at least some Bosnians in both entities will see that the Dayton constitution has imposed an impossibly top-heavy and overburdoned governmental structure on the country.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

After working in Bosnia for more than 10 years I have come to believe that the corruption is both a cause and a result of the war and that it remains the major problem for all major progress for the countrys progress and development. I do not believe it is limited to any branch of government and is also widespread in private business as well. The solution I believe is admission to Eu but at the same time the corruption stops that process. Nationalism is basically just a cover for corruption, look at the problems with policereform. Each government wants their own police that will not look to deeply into matters. Simultanously the nationalists work very well together behind the scenes where business as usual is going well. The population is fooled by ethnic slur, an ethnicity that does not really exist. Grass root activity is very limited because people know that if they try to expose the problems they may never get a job, permission etc.

It is a very sad story because the country and the people are really great and desrve much better. Main solution is process, accounting and jail for a bunch of the worst offenders.