Intelligence service report: corruption and economic problems are fuelling
extremism
In its report for 2012, released on Thursday, the Czech intelligence
service BIS warns that corruption remains a serious problem in the country,
with increasingly tighter links between businesses and public
administration. The service says that the public’s growing frustration
with the present state of affairs is leading to a rise in extremism that
presents a threat to democracy in the country.
Despite the former government’s proclaimed anti-corruption drive and a
number of high-profile corruption cases being dealt with by the courts, it
appears that the country has made little progress in rooting out this
modern-day blight. The BIS report speaks of increasingly tighter contacts
between private companies and public administration at all levels with the
aim of drawing money from state coffers through public procurement.
Projects are often artificially overvalued and there has been a huge and
totally unjustified increase in services outsourcing for public
administration.
Growing public discontent with this state of affairs combined with the
economic crisis has resulted in widespread frustration and a rise in
extremism among the public, the report says. Small ultra-right wing groups
have increasingly been able to rally public support for anti-Roma marches
and gatherings and while people are not actually voting for extreme parties
in the elections, the number of protest votes given to newcomers promising
to do away with corruption and curb welfare handouts to the chronically
unemployed in October’s early general elections is indicative of the mood
of the public.
The intelligence service says that –apart from the threat of street
violence - this presents another danger: that mainstream parties which feel
they are loosing ground may start to pander to these sentiments in order to
win votes in local elections. Miroslav Mareš, an expert on extremism, at
Brno’s Masaryk University says there are already indications that this is
happening.
“Even now we can see what I would describe as an “extremization” of
politics as such, the rhetoric, the activities of some local politicians,
that’s a dangerous phenomenon, this spread of anti-democratic ideas into
the broader political spectrum. We can find a lot of local politicians in
northern Bohemia who try to cooperate with extremists, and even when they
try to solve the problems of the Roma minority they do not avoid making
some racist statements. And also some established politicians use anti-Roma
prejudices in their political campaigns.
Although past intelligence service reports have dealt with anti-Romany
sentiments, the warning that growing extremism in the Czech Republic may
enter the sphere of politics, become widely accepted, and undermine
democracy in the country is unprecedented. For the first time the BIS also
offers recommendations on what should be done to avoid a worst-case
scenario. The report says the government must stop playing down the
problem, admit to the gravity of the situation and take effective measures
to combat the trend.
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