LN: Further control institution will not lower corruption

Prague, Feb 5 (CTK) - Corruption in the Czech Republic can by no means be lowered with the help of yet another control institution, Stanislav Balik writes in Lidove noviny Tuesday, commenting on a rejected bill extending the powers of the Supreme Audit Office (NKU) to include municipalities and regions.

The bill was rejected by the Senate last week. Deputy Prime Minister for fighting corruption Karolina Peake (LIDEM) said on Czech Television on Sunday she will submit the bill in an unchanged form again, Balik writes.

He writes that the Senate discussion on the bill was not a battle of those who want to fight corruption and those who want to support it.

It was rather a dispute between those who know how the system functions in practice and those who like bombastic slogans without aiming at any real improvement, Balik writes.

He writes that already now the NKU controls towns, villages and regions because it has the power to check their management of state subsidies, for instance.

If Peake wants to completely block municipal self-rule, she should burden it with more and more checks, Balik writes.

He says she should ask self-rule officials how much energy the eternal controls consume.

It may only be a guess, but it seems that there is no more controlled entity in the Czech public space than towns and villages, Balik writes.

Every municipality and region are obliged to have their own control and financial committees that check, among others, financial management, Balik writes.

He says it is gratifying that it happens more and more often that the committees are chaired by opposition representatives.

In the course of the year municipalities are supervised by regions that force them to adjust their budgets with often nonsensical shifts between chapters. Regional control officials are then followed by controllers from the tax office, Balik writes.

He writes that any subsidised order is checked by the subsidy-providing institution. If the money comes from state or "European" sources, the NKU can control it already now while the biggest corruption cases do not concern municipalities' own sources (shared taxes), but often precisely European or other grants and subsidies, Balik writes.

He writes that the rejection of the bill may have also been caused by the fear that the checks could aim at municipalities' own ("political") decision-making on whether they will repair streets, pavements or the culture house from their budgets.

If the democratic municipal self-rule is to be preserved, this decision-making must exclusively be under the control of the local bodies and citizens, Balik writes.

He says the observance of law on public orders and the selection of the most suitable bid (that need not always be the lowest) are already now controlled by other instances.

If the NKU is to be the sole guarantee of a really independent control, all lower levels should be abolished, Balik writes.

He says, however, even the reputation of such an independent institution as the NKU is, according to the constitutional order, largely depends on its head.

Balik is critical of short time distance between the rejection of the bill and its possible repeated submitting by Peake.

What is even more dubious is that she wants to do so as a private deputy's initiative, Balik writes and adds that the practice where a sole MP can submit a bill, even a constitutional one, is unusual in the world.

In this particular case it is even more incomprehensible because the sole MP, Peake, is a member of the government and even its deputy prime minister, Balik writes.

Does this mean that government representatives do not have at least minimal loyalty to their government and prefer to act as soloists even on such important things like a constitutional amendment, Balik asks.

He writes that they should better act in agreement with their government partners with whom they are co-responsible for the rule, or they should not submit any legislative initiative at all.

All the talk about reducing the corruption space through another control institution is ridiculous, Balik writes.

He says if Peake really wants to reduce the corruption space, she should do what she can repeatedly hear from many - reduce the volume of redistributed money.

The old proverb saying "it is easy to spend other's money" is right. For municipalities and regions "other's money" are subsidies rather than their "own" means from taxes that can be saved for the future years, Balik writes.

He writes that not even the NKU will do anything about this mental setting.