CHAPTER THREE: DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL GOVERNANCE _____________________________________________________________________ • 291. It breeds other forms of corruption: representatives elected in corrupt elections will necessarily create a corrupt administration, because they largely control the power of appointment to key positions in the public administration. This administration must thus maintain the system of corruption, either to keep election promises or to prepare in a corrupt way for the next election. Thus corruption feeds corruption. Strategies for combating corruption. According to the CSAR, the fight against corruption must be organised around the following strategies: • Public financing of political parties and electoral campaigns: this should be directed towards ensuring fair competition by providing each political party with minimum financial resources. The modalities of funding, however, vary greatly from one country to another. • Control of election expenses: this should consist in the filing, by the competing parties, of a financial report or campaign account tracing the origin of the resources and indicating their destination. • Involvement of civil society at different levels: in all countries of the West African subregion, texts relating to elections endeavour to involve CSOs in the electoral process so as to ensure, at an international level, the credibility of the elections of the country concerned. However, many barriers are constantly being erected by governments in order to reduce the effectiveness of these organisations. These barriers occur upstream and downstream and play a fundamental role in the failure to prevent electoral corruption. ii. Conclusions of the CRM 292. It appears, after consideration of the CSAR, that the CSAR has concentrated its attention more on electoral corruption. However, such corruption is not the only form of corruption that affects the political world. Therefore, the CSAR does not really inform one about the impact of corruption in Burkina. However, meetings on the ground and documentary research have identified corruption as a real scourge in Burkina Faso and something that affects all sectors of national life. 293. Incidence of corruption in Burkina Faso. A recent study conducted by the CGD (April 2006) on the perception of corruption states: “To understand the perceptions of those interviewed on the degree of probity or alleged involvement of certain personalities in the practice of corruption, the following question was asked: ‘How far do you think the following are involved in corruption, or you have not heard enough about it to be able to talk in your turn?’.” Interviewed people could choose the following modalities: ‘No one, most of them, all, I don’t know/haven’t heard about it’. If we rely on the responses of those surveyed, no sector seems to be safe from corruption. Only a more or less important minority of the people interviewed asserted that none 135