On the 6th of October 2015, the second Agora session regarding the topic “Advocacy goals 2016: focus on rule of law policies” was held. Several experts and CSO representatives with experience and knowledge on policy creating process in the rule of law sphere took part at the session. The session was divided into three parts where the CSO representatives exchanged their opinions and ideas regarding the topic.
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The first part of the session was aimed at the public institutions corruption fight, as one of the biggest challenges that the country faces. The representatives of the CSOs noted that effective mechanisms for fighting corrupion are lacking, esspecially a proctection of whistleblowers law which would protect citizens, and especially clerks in the public institutions if they decide to report corruption. Moreover, a mechanism where clerks can report corruption also lacks. It was also pointed out that institutions and revision agencies, working on corruption prevention are unsuccessful, and the reasons are to be found in several areas. First, lack of will for undertaking measures in areas where indications of corruption are present, was noticed. As a second factor, the low institution’s budgets were mentioned. And finally, the problem that some institutions have to take more serious measures for handling corruption, were mentioned. Some of the CSO representatives suggested that the citizen’s perception of corruption is also a problem, the fact that low profile corruption such as gifts for completed services, are not perceived as corruption.
The second part of the session was directed towards depoliticisation, or more specifically departization of the public administration. It was noted that the main problems of the public administration are its size and the partisanship. The CSOs representatives agreed that the public administration reduction process is hard. However, it is also a process that has to be carried out necessarily. Several modules for tackling this problem were stressed out, such as a moratorium on new employments and restructurisation of the job positions.
During the third part of the session the discussion was focused on the elections and the election campaign. For this topic the representatives of the CSOs pointed out that it is important to incorporate OSCE and ODIHR’s recommendations, especially in relations to the separation of state from party, as well as disabling the possibility to make pressure on the employees in the public institutions. Furthermore, it was noted that the media and audiovisual media services law needs amendments in order to change the way that the Agency for audio and audiovisual media services functions in a way that would increase the power of the professional service.
The findings and conclusions from the discussion will be used by the Institute for Democracy “Societas Civilis” – Skopje, for the preparation of a synthesized recommendation for all decision makers, and specifically for the Government of the Republic of Macedonia and the relevant ministries.
This event was organized within the project “Agora sessions” implemented by the Institute for Democracy “Societas Civilis” – Skopje (IDSCS) and financed by the British Embassy in Skopje.