55 50 45 40 36.9 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Government Who has a negative influence on the interethnic relations? 52.5 38.9 26.3 14.1 25.9 22.6 16.5 Parties NGO’s Local Government Media Religious International Institutions Organisations Education Graph 3. Perceptions of the young people for the negative influence on the interethnic relations(in percentages) the implementation of the Frame Agreement. It is clear that there is a correlation between the respondents who think that Macedonia is going in the wrong direction and those who believe that interethnic relations have worsened since last year(17%), or that they will worsen within the next year(13%). Although at first glance one might assume that pessimists will always be pessimists, it is worth emphasizing that only 30 to 50% of these responses were given by those who believe that Macedonia is going in the wrong direction. Almost 30% of the respondents who think that we are going in the wrong direction expect improvements in the area of interethnic relations, and 35% of them believe that interethnic relations have improved since last year. In general, young people consider that interethnic relations have improved, or that they will further improve in the next year, which is in accordance with the attitudes and expectations of the general public in the Republic of Macedonia. 22 Perceptions of the Corruption in Macedonia Corruption in the Republic of Macedonia is one of the most urgent problems within the last 16 years of transitional reforms and efforts for a democratic and economic consolidation of the country. In this regard, data given by the majority of international organisations, among which is the CPI(corruption perception index of the Transparency International), reveals that citizens of the Republic of Macedonia largely perceive the country as a rather corrupted one. Likewise, this organisation's research finds the Republic of Macedonia's ranking in the lower part of following Table 6, according to its own citizens' perceptions of the degree of corruption. That this level of perception of the corruption is not much different among the young generation is shown by the results of the research conducted by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the Institute for Democracy"Societas Civilis". When asked to select the greatest problem in Macedonia, corruption occupies second place(26.7% of the respondents decided on the corruption as the greatest problem in the Republic of Macedonia), ranked next to unemployment(unemployment is the greatest problem for 44.8% of the population). The equal distribution of this perception points out that there is a general consensus about this issue among young people in Macedonia, regardless of their sex, ethnic group, place of living, education or profession. This would not be a worrisome fact if corruption were not unambiguously perceived as a critical factor in the Republic of Macedonia's weak economic situation. When asked to rank the reasons for the country's slow economic development, the young population chose the following two leading problems: the corruption and government. That corruption handicaps the economy is a very important problem for 72.4% of the respondents, and it was an important problem for 21.1% of them. This reveals a huge percentage of 93.5% of the young respondents who consider that corruption destroys the economic tissue of the Republic of Macedonia year after year, and as such is responsible for the slow economic growth. In relation to the aforementioned statistics, it is interesting also to emphasise the complete parallel between the two most responsible factors for the slow economic growth in the perceptions of the young people. Namely, bad Year of the test 2003 2004 Corruption perceptionindex score(CPI score) 2.3 2.7 Ranking of the Republic of Macedonia 108 99 Total number of ranked countries 133 145 Table 6. CPI score of the Republic of Macedonia during the period 2003-2005 23 2005 2.7 104 158 _____________________________________________________________ 22 UNDP. Early Warning Report, Skopje, March 2006. p. 32 23 Source: Transparency International Friedrich Ebert Stiftung 19