FOR Romania’s corrupt politicians, Laura Kovesi has been a nightmare. Appointed chief of the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) in 2013, the implacable prosecutor has overseen the convictions of more than 1,000 officials, businesspeople and politicians, including nine former ministers. In June the DNA won a felony conviction against Liviu Dragnea who, as head of the ruling Social Democrats (PSD), is Romania’s most powerful politician. He could face three-and-a-half years in prison for putting two PSD functionaries on the payroll of the state child-protection agency.

Yet Mr Dragnea’s allies have fought back, implausibly accusing Ms Kovesi of incompetence and of targeting only politicians she dislikes. In February the justice minister ordered her to be fired, but President Klaus Iohannis refused to sign her dismissal. The constitutional court sided with the government, and on July 9th Mr Iohannis reluctantly sacked her.

Ms Kovesi and the DNA have been a beacon of hope for reformers in central and eastern Europe. Her dismissal is part of a dismal trend. Across the region, upstart clean-hands parties and protest movements face an unfair fight against networks of self-dealing politicians and relentless popular disenchantment.

In Ukraine, where politics is dominated by powerful oligarchs, reformers won a long-sought victory in June when parliament created an independent anti-corruption court. But critics say the new court lacks sufficient powers. Anti-corruption campaigners face relentless harassment. On July 17th Vitaly Shabunin, one of the country’s top activists, was attacked by thugs and sprayed with green dye as police stood by passively.

Bulgaria, the worst offender in the European Union, hurriedly passed a new anti-corruption law in January after taking over the EU’s rotating presidency. But the new law violates an EU directive by failing to protect whistle-blowers, who would have to identify themselves to submit evidence. In the Czech Republic, the prime minister, Andrej Babis, formed his second minority government in June despite facing charges of fraud.

Slovakia had an inspirational period this spring, after the murders in February of a young investigative journalist and his girlfriend sparked huge protests that forced Robert Fico, the prime minister, to resign. “People couldn’t believe they lived in the sort of country where journalists get murdered,” says Karolina Farska, a 19-year-old student and one of the central figures in the Initiative for a Decent Slovakia, which helped organise the protests. Her group plans to back independent candidates in the country’s municipal elections later this year. But the amateur movement has lost steam, and few people think its transition to electoral politics will be successful.

Good-government parties depend on the diffuse hopes of citizens for a better country. Corrupt parties have more concrete motivations: money, power and the need to protect themselves from the law. Since the PSD took power in Romania in December 2016, “the entire energy of the government has been focused on keeping Mr Dragnea out of jail,” says Dan Barna, leader of the Union to Save Romania (USR), an opposition anti-corruption party.

The USR helped organise protests in early 2017 that stopped the government from passing an ordinance to cripple the DNA and exonerate Mr Dragnea. But a new law before parliament would have much the same effect, giving the justice minister more power over the judiciary. The Council of Venice, a European legal advisory body, says the measure could damage the rule of law. The European Commission says it will “take action where necessary” to ensure compatibility with EU law—a veiled threat of infringement proceedings if the new measure goes too far.

The risk is what political scientists call “state capture”: the monopolisation of government by corrupt actors. Exposing scandals without fixing them does little good, says Miroslav Beblavy, a Slovakian MP who in January co-founded Together, a good-government party. This may drive voters to populist parties who promise revenge on elites: “If you see someone pissing in your face every day and there’s nothing you can do about it, that makes you about as angry as you can get.”