Your Silence Is Expensive! Campaign for a Clean Local Public Administration

Asociatia Pro Democratia implements the project “Your Silence Is Expensive! Campaign for a Clean Local Public Administration” between December 2007 and October 2008. As far as the fight against corruption is concerned, Asociatia Pro Democratia has a specific approach among Romanian NGOs active in the field. It focuses on promoting integrity, so preventing corruption rather than fighting corruption by pushing for punishments for individual acts. Consequently, the purpose of this project is to develop a stimulating environment for fighting corruption at the level of six municipalities in Romania. In order to do so, the main instrument APD will use and further develop is the activity of whistle-blowers as a discouraging practice for corruption acts, different types of abuses and incompatibilities in local government.

APD will use its experience in the field of promoting integrity (it has already successfully implemented two national projects in the field and has been a partner organization in at least one other national project) and its monitoring reports on the Whistle-blowers’ Law in order to support the local legal framework in this field, to further promote the law among civil servants, and to train local resource-persons that will be able to file for complaints or assist the potential plaintiffs regarding abuses of public institutions representatives.

The project starts by elaborating a model for the Public policy regarding the whistle-blowers. This document is going to be put forward to local public institutions and promoted during the local advocacy campaigns. The component of training local resource-persons will be accomplished by organizing two trainings for local public servants on the topic of whistle-blowing and public integrity.

The leading part of the project is the local advocacy campaign which should determine public institutions to comply with the provisions of Law 571/2004 regarding the protection of the personnel from the public authorities and institutions which reclaim law infringements. The starting point of the campaign will be conducting a research in order to figure out the level of abiding by this specific regulation and whistle-blowers’ protection.

The main instruments for the local campaigns are:

• Public presentation of the conclusions drawn from the research;
• Transmitting public messages taken from the local media regarding the public integrity topics and whistle-blowers’ protection;
• Sending letters to decision-makers;
• Editing the leaflet “Your silence is expensive!” and its direct distribution to the target groups in public institutions;
• Developing an online campaign through the website http://integritate.resurse-pentru-democratie.org/, administered by Asociatia Pro Democratia.

The project is implemented in partnership with the Center for Legal Resources, the Resource Center for Public Participation and the Agency for Governmental Strategies and benefits from the financial support of the European Union through the 2005 Phare – Strengthening Democracy in Romania Program.

This article was published in Politeia Newsletter 48 - February 2008