Cikotić remains silent, Independent Body sends list to BiH Council of Ministers: Are police chief appointments on hold?

By Amra Vrabac

The BiH Ministry of Security has not responded for days to Patria's question about when Minister Selmo Cikotić received the ranking list of candidates after the Independent Body's procedure regarding the filling of vacant positions of directors and deputies in three state police agencies, and what he did with that list.

Given that there is no response from the Ministry of Security, and the Independent Body of the BiH Parliament announced on August 9 that they had sent the ranking list to the Council of Ministers of BiH, it is clear that there are certain problems in this process.

We remind you that the Independent Body concluded the interviews on July 19 and prepared the ranking list. In the meantime, Minister Cikotić had Covid-19 and was not at work. The Independent Body met again on August 9, after which it was announced that the list had been forwarded to the Council of Ministers of BiH.

However, the appointment of the heads of the three state police agencies will be on hold for some time longer. Although a session of the Council of Ministers of BiH was scheduled for August 25, the agenda has not been published. The mandates of directors and deputies, except for the director of SIPA, expired at the end of May. They remain in their positions until the appointment of new directors and deputies.   

The ranking list proposes two names of successful candidates each. For the position of Director of the Directorate for the Coordination of Police Bodies, Mirsad Đelilović and Ensad Korman were proposed. For the Deputy Director of the Directorate for the Coordination of Police Bodies, Goran Amidžić and Đuro Knežević, the current Deputy Director of SIPA, were proposed. Two more names are in the running for the deputy position from the Serb people, including Dragan Kulić from the BiH Border Police. According to Patria's information, the difference in points between the candidates from the Serb people is only half a point.

When Milorad Dodik, the president of SNSD, said yesterday that he would block all projects due to the Eastern Interconnection, which did not receive the support of the Council of Ministers of BiH, it remained unclear whether this also applied to appointments in police agencies.

Because, let's be honest, SNSD has one out of six positions, and that is a deputy position in the Directorate for the Coordination of Police Bodies, so they are not in a hurry.

The remaining five positions – Director of the Directorate for the Coordination of Police Bodies, one deputy, Director of the BiH Border Police, Deputy Director of the BiH Border Police, and Deputy Director of SIPA – are held by Bosniaks and Croats.

The Director of SIPA is Darko Ćulum, who is close to SNSD. So SNSD is not in a hurry with appointments in police agencies. Dodik is more interested in changing the leadership of OSA, although that process has completely stalled.

According to the ranking list for the Director of the Border Police, the top-ranked candidate is Robert Perić, close to HDZ BiH, and the second-ranked is Mirko Kuprešaković. For the Deputy Director of SIPA, the top-ranked candidate is Zoran Galić, and the second-ranked is Vladimir Popović, both from the BiH Border Police. 

For the Deputy Director of the Border Police, Fahrudin Halač and Amra Aljić were proposed. This would be Halač's second term.