Bearing in mind the situation in our society and the commendable campaign against corruption, in respect to the message issued on October 21, 2010 by the bishops from the plenary session of the CCB in Lovran, we find it necessary to call attention to the facts and social processes that could help us fight more successfully against the social evils of bribery and corruption, but also to the processes that in the justified war on corruption cause us to lose sight of the just goals and turn positive results into their opposites, so that the cure threatens to be worse than the disease.

1. Corruption and Mentality

Bribery and corruption did not originate in the contemporary Croatian society, as (unfortunately again due to shallow political reasons) some wish to assert or as it appears in media-attractive presentations. Myth and bribery in the Croatian society have a long history, as many analysts and recent research have confirmed. Therefore, it is a social phenomenon and problem that should be perceived and addressed at such a level. It is a matter of an inherited mentality that we must change.

2. European Society – Bribery and Corruption

In our country, we can often hear how “Europe,” referring to the EU, will “cure” many of our “ills,” and thus bribery and corruption. This is a misconception in many ways. Bribery and corruption are deviant social phenomena, from which even the contemporary European societies are not exempt. Theologically speaking, this concerns the sinful nature of the person, i.e., the structures of sin, from which the person on the individual level and the society on a structural level can and must purify and liberate themselves. This is an ongoing process and requirement, from which no person or society ever has or ever will receive amnesty. Thus, it is not necessary to expect that in our accession to the EU we shall enter as a perfect society that does not have these problems. They exist but are being confronted and fought, sometimes more and sometimes less successfully. However, the struggle against these evils is an ongoing necessity for a society that wants to be governed by the principles of the common good, that wants to make it possible for every individual to develop his or her qualities and participate in the life of the society in the optimal manner.
We in Croatia – in addition to a developed ideology of messianism that seeks an easy solution to all social issues, especially difficult ones, and sees this in some “force” that will come and fix everything, whether it be the young, the educated, the diaspora, the EU, NATO etc. – have developed still another strong and powerful mythology that prevents us from seriously confronting problems, from posing them in a more serious manner and then solving them appropriately. This is the mythology of the scapegoat. The background concept is relatively simple and religiously powerful. We sense injustice, we perceive a problem. We find some culprits, scapegoats, sacrifice them and behave as if we had solved the problem. However, problems do not pass this way but only multiply. We are of the opinion that precisely this is happening today in the war against bribery and corruption. Instead of orienting ourselves according to the core of the problem, we orient ourselves to the pursuit and labeling of individuals and groups. The pursuit of individuals and groups suspected of criminal activity is the task of the police and judiciary. At the level of the society, it is necessary to start mechanisms that will deconstruct the moving forces behind such behavior, which the police and judiciary certainly cannot do. Their authorities have and must have a limited range because otherwise we enter into the great danger of limiting freedom and, thereby, [limiting] democracy as a desirable political system.

3. Political, Economic and Legal Uncertainty

Such a concept of the war against bribery and corruption breeds political and then legal and economic insecurity. If the government promises arrests and trials, if the opposition promises even more arrests and trials, if the media passes judgments and “tries” people, which has been the case in our country for a long time, the result of such activities is again social insecurity that breeds political instability, legal insecurity and economic stagnation. Uncertainty breeds distrust. In the society, we note a steady decline in confidence in the social institutions and also by Croats in [fellow] Croats. In such a climate of low trust, it is not possible to achieve any kind of economic growth and recovery whatsoever, especially rapid. The economy is not only dependent upon economic factors. The key factor for the development of recovery is the person, and a person is a being who lives on confidence. The current economic situation in the society is certainly substantially influenced by low confidence and its continuous erosion.

4. Increase in the Level of Corruption

If we continue the war against bribery and corruption by reducing it to the processes described, it could happen that the cure will indeed be worse than the disease, i.e., that we could cause general social instability resulting in an increase, not a decrease, in the evils of bribery and corruption in the society.
Therefore, we urge all politicians, intellectuals and especially the media not to create sociomoral panic in the society, not to condemn people whose guilt has not been proven. It is particularly important here to appeal for prudence and civil culture and not to declare suspects and their family members or even the family members of convicted persons to be guilty of crimes. In this area, we have been witnesses to truly inappropriate commentaries and news reports. It should be recalled that in the good tradition of the safeguarding of human rights and civil freedoms of the free Western democracies, a suspect is innocent until proven otherwise. When and if someone is legally convicted, this does not mean that his family members must be convicted with him unless it has been proven that they participated in criminal acts. Otherwise, this would return us to the dark times of clannish, tribal vengeance, which acquired new forms during the regimes of the totalitarian systems, when whole families suffered due to individual family members who violated some social norms or, more often, simply found themselves on the wrong sides at the wrong times. It would not be good for that primitive clannish-tribal model modernized under totalitarianism, although essentially remaining the same, to undergo a new metamorphosis and develop as “our democratic model.” A lynching law has never brought anyone any good, and will not do so in today’s Croatia, so it is better to relinquish it and go no further in that direction. In this context, we urge the media to protect the dignity of the families of persons suspected or convicted of crimes, and also urge Croatian legislators to find better solutions for protecting the human rights and civil liberties of those subjected to media lynching, when their only crime is that they are the children, spouses or relatives of Croatian citizens suspected or convicted of crimes.

5. Institutional Support

Without intending to absolve anyone from responsibility, whether political or criminal, we are of the opinion that for every government and opposition, the political elites in Croatia, one of their primary tasks is to help the institutions in the society do their work, and not to obstruct them in this respect. Furthermore, the war against the evils of bribery and corruption should extend to the level of the society and confront the consequences of the mentality that has emerged under the particular socio-historical conditions in which the Croatian nation lived not only during the past 20, 50 or 70 years but also during the past 200 years, when modernization occurred at the level of the European, and thus Croatian, society with good and bad repercussions. Among the bad, we can follow the legacy of a mentality connected with bribery and corruption from the remnants of feudal and communist pre-modernities to the more recent contemporary Croatian society that has still not resolved these pre-modernities. It has not even confronted them seriously, which would be a prerequisite for their ultimate transcendence. The fundamental institution that we must respect in this context is the Croatian state. We urge those who hold high public office to appear in public with greater wisdom and grace, especially when they represent the state in other countries. In the world, even among the member states of the European Union, there are more corrupt countries than the Republic of Croatia. However, the representatives of these states do not denigrate their countries because they know that this would not help them. The war on corruption is waged by working on good and just laws, increasing the competence of civil servants and educating citizens, especially those engaged in the demanding work of politicians, in order to be prepared to assume responsibility, even for difficult and risky decisions that have to be made in order to solve some problems, and not by embarrassing one’s own country. The war on the evils of bribery and corruption is waged by strengthening institutions, not only the repressive institutions of the society, but also by strengthening the fundamental social institutions, families and schools, and respect for one’s own country, the broadest framework in which we are called to develop our talents but also to solve our problems. In the hope for the general progress of our country, we invite the faithful to pray for the Homeland.

In Zagreb, November 8, 2010

Msgr. Vlado Košić, Ph.D.
President of the Justitia et Pax Commission of the Croatian Conference of Bishops