Election of SIPA Director: Deceiving Citizens and Undermining Independent Boards

(Patria) - The latest developments surrounding the election of the SIPA director have once again exposed the illusion of the rule of law in BiH. For who knows how many times, politicians in practice are proving that they are mocking both the international community, which persistently turns a blind eye to such examples, and the citizens to whom a quality and fairly established system for selecting top officials in police structures is falsely presented, CSS points out.

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Can Zukan Helez make the appointment of SIPA Director Slobodan Radinković conditional on the dismissal of fugitive Zoran Galić?

By: Amra Vrabac The next session of the BiH Council of Ministers, scheduled for Monday, September 16, could be turbulent if the BiH Minister of Defense, Zukan Helez, places state interests above party and coalition interests. Namely, although the request of the ministers from

"Currently, the procedures for two appointments to high positions in the police are in focus, which are a blatant example of the abuse of the established system and the dominance of politics over defined legal rules and procedures. The Minister of Security of BiH, Mr. Nešić, in accordance with his legal powers, decided to propose the third-ranked person from the competition conducted by the Independent Board of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, responsible for the selection procedures of heads and deputies of state-level police agencies, for the position of SIPA Director.

As we have stated, in accordance with the law, the Minister of Security of BiH has the right to propose one of the persons from the list compiled by the Independent Board, with adequate justification to the Council of Ministers of BiH, which makes the final decision, on why they decided not to propose the first-ranked or, in this case, the second-ranked candidate.

What outcome this proposal will have at the session of the Council of Ministers of BiH remains to be seen, but there is a suspicion that it will happen similarly to one of the previous appointments for this agency. At that time, the then Minister of Security of BiH, Mr. Mektić, stated in a public appearance that the appointment of an SDS candidate for this position did not suit one political option, and when they were proposing the SNSD favorite, the procedure did not bother them.

The second case concerns the appointment of the Director of the Federal Police Administration. In a recent interview, somewhat naively for a politician, the Prime Minister of FBiH, Mr. Nikšić, stated that the appointment to this position is a political issue. By doing so, he completely derogated the Law on Internal Affairs of FBiH, which, in its Article 46, stipulates that an Independent Board is formed to ensure an impartial, objective, and legal procedure for appointing the police director, free from any political influence.

Based solely on these two examples, which we have witnessed for many years, regardless of the political power, the undermining of the work of the Independent Boards, established at one time based on the best democratic practices in the world and as an example of successful reform in police structures, is best illustrated. It is time for something drastic to change in the approach, because practice has shown us that the members of the Independent Boards are far from apolitical and from the influence of politics on their work.

Special attention should be paid to the citizens and the public to whom democratic principles and values of the work of political structures are presented, while in reality, they are only spectators to whom Potemkin villages are presented," state the Center for Security Studies.