Difference between revisions of "Pozornost', d'akovné, všimné (Slovakia)"

The term pozornosť, by contrast, was dissociated from ‘bribe’ by the sociologist Iveta Radičová (who served in 2010-2012 as Slovakia’s first woman prime minister). Emphasising that it has long been customary in Slovakia to visit a notary, teacher, priest or mayor bearing a small gift, Radičová argued that there is a clear distinction between such traditional ‘elementary decency’ and paying bribes (Topky 2011)<ref>Topky.sk. 2011. 'Pozornosť a úplatok nie je to isté, vysvetľuje Radičová', November 7, http://www.topky.sk/cl/10/867270/Pozornost-a-uplatok-nie-je-to-iste--vysvetluje-Radicova</ref>. In practice, however, it is not always easy to make such a distinction. Just as the tradition of paying tribute for state services was once criminalised (Lovell et al. 2000)<ref></ref>, in modern societies the size of the gift is usually regulated by anti-corruption legislation. Small gifts and payment, however, remain a matter of individual discretion. Even this is not always unproblematic, however, and much depends on the context. For example, Slovak courts frequently hand down heavy penalties for bribes as small as 5 to 10 Euros paid for putting someone on sick leave without genuine medical justification. These penalties may include a suspended prison sentence and a fine of several hundred Euros. While such sentences have been criticised as too harsh by bloggers and in the press, Judge Hrubala has pointed out that, taken together, such corrupt practices can cost the state and society huge amounts of money paid out in the form of health and social benefits from public insurance funds (Hrubala 2015).

As a result of the fact that parts of today’s Slovakia were under Ottoman rule in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Turkic word baksheesh was commonly used in Slovakia at least until the 1920s to denote such practices as tipping a waiter (Makarová 2005). It was also used to denote a small bribe paid to someone in authority. (Indeed, it is used in that sense in many other countries to this day, see entry on baksheesh in this volume). Since the 1980s, Slovak terms have come to dominate, and for 20 or 30 years bakshis ceased to be used. Recently, it has begun to be used again, but only in the context of travel on holiday to North Africa or the Middle East.

It is telling that the standard dictionary of the Slovak language, published in 1987, included only one of the three words discussed here — pozornosť. Among other meanings, the dictionary included the informal meaning of ‘an object (vec) given to somebody to show affiliation, thankfulness’ (Doruľa et al. 1987:327). The 1987 edition of the dictionary (which included all the words judged most likely to be used at that time by high-school graduates) contained no entry for either ďakovné or všimné. This suggests either that these terms were morally ambiguous, and/or that they were not frequently used. The 2003 edition of the same dictionary (which listed the 60,000 words most frequently used at that time in everyday speech) defined the term všimné as a jocular way of referring to a small bribe, while ďakovné received no mention.