Ariel Rusila's Conflicts [Ex-BalkanPerspective]

A common utterance “money talks” is sometimes used also related to elections. One could suppose that if voting matters the parties or candidates are investing more to win elections. Normal marketing is sometimes not guaranteeing enough votes so in many societies more crude means are used such as election fraud/rigging, non-transparent and illegal political campaign and party financing. A simple vote buying maybe tells most about importance of elections. I wonder if there exists in any EU member state a barometer showing current price level of votes in EP elections, not only the official campaign costs but the unofficial price per vote. Buying a polling station or enough of them could be one possibility which from my opinion is complicated to implement in EP elections. I was quite surprised while reading from BNP pages that some party really thinks this to be possible. A quote : All British National Party members and supporters have been urged to be on the lookout for polling s...

A big part of EU Aid for reconstruction projects of Kosovo has been wasted due criminal activities, corruption, frauds and mismanagement reports German daily Die Welt on 18th Dec. 2008. As base of this claim are the investigations conducted by the EU Anti Fraud Office (OLAF), UN investigators and the Italian Financial Police. More than 50 cases of financial embezzlement was found - most of them in energy sector. In twelve of these cases there is proof of criminal liability. According to EU data roughly 2.3 billion euro have been granted for Kosovo as aid since 1999, after the NATO bombing of Serbia. Some 400 million euros has been wasted for energy projects. According to the alleged reports, EU funds that had been destined for Kosovo’s energy sector, were misappropriated by UN officials in Kosovo, in conduit with local politicians. Whatever the reasons the results are humble at best - after eight years investments power cuts are still part of daily life in Kosovo. While most of the 2.3...

Political freedom is usually described as the absence of interference with the sovereignty of an individual by the use of coercion or aggression. Often word “Liberty” - the condition in which an individual has the ability to act according to his or her own will - has been connected to freedom and social anarchists see negative and positive liberty as complementary concepts of freedom. Freedom House is an independent nongovernmental organization based in USA that supports the expansion of freedom in the world. Freedom House’s definition of freedom is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. The Declaration includes freedom of religion, expression, and assembly; freedom from torture; and the right to take part in the government of his or her country. With these limitations – US organisation and definition of freedom – the survey anyway tells something also about Balkans. Global perspecti...