Independent Board to Make Final Decision on FUP Director Contest

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - The Independent Board of the BiH Parliament will hold a session on Monday, which should finally end the saga surrounding the contest for the Director of the Federal Police Administration, which has been ongoing for months, specifically since July when the FBiH Government voted on each name from the ranking list provided by the Independent Board, but no candidate received the necessary support to be appointed.

Following that FBiH Government session, correspondence was exchanged between the Independent Board and the FBiH Ministry of Interior (FMUP) and the FBiH Government, and vice versa, but it should finally be known at tomorrow's session of the Independent Board whether there will be a new contest for the FUP Director. We remind you that more than two and a half years have passed since the contest procedure and the final ranking list.

The Independent Board has received a response from the FBiH Government regarding the contest for the election of the Director of the Federal Police Administration. The FBiH Government adopted a conclusion in which it stated its position that the contest should be annulled and a new one announced.

The Independent Board of the BiH Parliament had previously requested that, instead of a Conclusion, they be provided with a Decision outlining the reasons for rejecting each candidate from the List of Candidates for FUP Director that the Independent Board submitted to the FBiH Government.

"According to Article 19, Paragraph 3 of the Law on the Government of the Federation of BiH, it is stipulated that decisions on appointments and dismissals, as well as other individual matters within the Government's jurisdiction, are made by a decision, and Paragraph 4 of the same Article states that conclusions are used for matters related to the implementation of established policy, regulating internal relations within the Government of FBiH and assigning tasks to federal state administration bodies and government services," the response states.

Sources of the Patria News Agency state that the Independent Board should finally put an end to the entire story and annul the previous contest, given that the Government did not choose any candidate, and announce a new one. What could pose a problem is the ambiguity of the Law on Internal Affairs, which does not specify what to do if the FBiH Government does not select any candidate from the ranking list. However, the entire appointment procedure has been stalled for almost two years since the Independent Board submitted the ranking list in April 2019.

In June 2019, the FBiH Government adopted a conclusion to suspend the appointment procedure for the FUP Director until a new FBiH Government was appointed, so that the appointment would not affect the election of the FBiH Minister of Internal Affairs, as the minister and the director cannot be from the same constituent nation. The appointment of a new Government never happened, and the Government voted on the ranking list at its July session, which concluded the process.

The Federal Police Administration has been headed by Ensad Korman as acting director for more than two years.

In addition to Zoran Galić, who was first on the list and who sued the FBiH Government for not being appointed, the list also includes Milan Galić, former police commissioner of the West Herzegovina Canton, who was reappointed to that position at the end of March 2021 but resigned in October, Ensad Korman, Deputy Director of FUP, Robert Perić, Head of the Southern Regional Office and Chief Inspector in the BiH Border Police, Ljuban Frljić, Head of a sector of the Police Administration of the MUP of SBK (retired), Mustafa Hujdurović, Inspector in FUP, and Zoran Čegar, Head of the Uniformed Police Sector of the Federal Police Administration.

At tomorrow's session, the Independent Board should also take a stance on the letter from the FBiH Minister of Internal Affairs Aljoša Čampara, who reported irregularities in the recruitment of 88 police officers to the FUP to the prosecutor's offices.