Diana Kovacheva: Only around 10% of Bulgarian citizens tend to alert authorities about corruptionDiana Kovacheva, Executive Director Transparency International - Bulgaria

Host: the fight against corruption over the past 3 years has been futile. Almost half of Bulgarians regard anti-corruption efforts in Bulgaria as empty declarations and the Government is idle. Bulgarians define the judiciary system and political parties as most susceptible to corruption in the country. Labeling the judiciary system as the most corrupt puts us in the list among countries like Cambodia, Mongolia, Peru, Kosovo, Armenia. Transparency International presented its 2009 Global Corruption Barometer. Diana Kovacheva, Executive Director Transparency International is in the studio. Good morning. Welcome.
Diana Kovacheva: Good morning.

Host: What is the most peculiar thing about this survey?
Diana Kovacheva: This is a traditional survey conducted by Transparency International that covers 69 countries and Bulgaria has been included for the fifth consecutive year. Bulgarian citizens were polled about their personal experience with bribery, where bribery cases are most common and how prone they are to send out alarm against corruption.

Host: 82% state that sending out alarm against corruption is meaningless or is a waste of time or is dangerous with information leakage.
Diana Kovacheva: Unfortunately only about 10% of Bulgarian citizens tend to alert authorities about corruption, which is a very feeble percentage. The rest of the people consider alarming useless.

Host: How long has it been since the last similar survey so we could compare data and see the tendency?
Diana Kovacheva: The survey is conducted annually since 2003. The data from last October compared to last February manifest a stable tendency showing that for a third consecutive year Bulgarians consider the judiciary system as most tainted by corruption. This high index is a worrying fact against data from other EU countries. With 5 being the highest negative result, Bulgarians point 4, 5. In comparison, worldwide the judiciary system is considered less corrupt than political parties and is marked about 3, 5. There is certain stability about that particular perception. The judiciary however is closely followed by political parties, public administration, the Parliament and the business.

Host: the judiciary ranks top – this distinguishes us from the rest.
Diana Kovacheva: This is the peculiar thing about Bulgaria.

Host: Do we hit bottom of EU charts?
Diana Kovacheva: Unfortunately as far as perception of corruption is concerned and government efficiency in tackling the problem this is so. The poll shows that only 10% of Bulgarians consider administrative efforts in the fight against corruption to be efficient unlike say Romanians where the number of the percentage is 20. Romanians too are pessimists. As for the average percentage in the other EU countries, it exceeds 50.

Host: This is not close at all. Let us see some charts to comment on. There – we have police, judiciary, agricultural offices. What is this chart telling?
Diana Kovacheva: These are the sectors, in which Bulgarian citizens pay bribe money most often. This however reflects only petty, everyday corruption.

Host: The police is most often associated with the traffic authorities.
Diana Kovacheva: Yes. The police, the judiciary, the institutions related to education and healthcare, the institutions that are most frequently visited by the citizens. One of the difference between Bulgarians and the average EU citizen is that the latter is prone to pay more for a product that is offered by companies practicing anti-corruption policies. Bulgarians are not prone to pay more to such a company, i.e. people’s sensitiveness in this regard is very low.

Host: Another charter.
Diana Kovacheva: Yes, this is the charter showing how readily citizens would alarm about encountered corruption cases and this charter here is about the efficacy of the government’s efforts to curb corruption. We recently had the chance to analyze the efficacy of the government’s anti-corruption strategy over the past three e years. The conclusion we came to was that despite the fact that some of the measures envisaged had been performed over the past 3 years, those were random and inconsistent and therefore results were not visible.

Host: So I understand you will have your secret monitors at some of polling station during Election day. About 300 hundred people of Transparency International will be doing this.
Diana Kovacheva: We are planning to perform a serious monitoring of the EP and national elections within the “It’s my choice” civic coalition. We have the capacity to monitor about 300 stations. Volunteers trained with us will perform this monitoring.

Host: What exactly will they be looking out for?
Diana Kovacheva: They’ll be looking out for violations on the Election Day related to vote buying or manipulations in that respect and they will be immediately notifying us of any such cases.

Host: Will they be allowed to stay at the stations?
Diana Kovacheva: Yes, they have been registered with the Central Electoral Commission as official monitors.

Host: It has been said at previous elections that buying whole polling stations is the new thing now where the whole commissions gets bribed.
Diana Kovacheva: Such information has been provided by political parties too. This is why we insisted on adopting regional polling stations to make counting more massive and public. Unfortunately the idea was rejected. Anyway we are prepared to monitor.

Host: Why wasn’t your idea adopted?
Diana Kovacheva: The basic argument was that parties did not want to take the risk of such changes in the very eve of the elections.

Host: The official argument is known.
Diana Kovacheva: I think that, according to data from surveys that vote buying concerns between 10 and 14 percent of Bulgarian citizens. If electoral activity is low enough this could seriously influence results if I can so…

Host: Would you say that political parties want to use such leverage since they rejected your arguments?
Diana Kovacheva: Some of our proposals were adopted. Unfortunately that particular proposal that could sever control on voting in small villages was not accepted. We think that the reason has to do with preserving the existing schemes. Vote trading schemes are developed years in advance and function well enough it seems. This is why we plan to do our monitoring.

Host: In a while we’ll be having some representatives of the Interior Ministry here.
Diana Kovacheva: The role of the MI is very crucial in this instance. We too are prepared to receive signals and call for people to notify us of any witnessed violation.

Host: What is your phone line?
Diana Kovacheva: 0 800 11 224. All calls are free. We have agreements with the Interior Ministry and wit SANS and with the Prosecutor’s Office where we’ll be redirecting signals to.

Host: 0 800 11 224.
Diana Kovacheva: Our civic campaign too started with a video against vote trading. The message is that while selling your vote you get purchased altogether.

Host: Last question. Are you aware of any new tricks that will be used by the people relying to manipulate the vote? Anything that will become a hit so to speak?
Diana Kovacheva: We do have some information that we intend to use and the training our monitors underwent included instructions about specific sensitive practices they should be alert about. Such practices are well known anyway.

Host: How about some new technique that could appear now?
Diana Kovacheva: There could hardly appear any real novelties. The practices are old and unfortunately quite efficient. The role of the public too is very important. So anyone can take part, watch, alert, get involved in the process.

Host: That would be nice but according to your survey 82% of the people are not inclined to alert about corruption cases encountered. So why would we rely on people to alert about violations on Election day...
Diana Kovacheva: People are discouraged because of the lack of confidence in institutions. Unfortunately. Let institutions prove their efficiency now.

Host: Diana Kovacheva, Executive Director Transparency International.