Four Years of Advocacy and Legal Advice Centre

Advocacy and Legal Advice Centre project, which has been implemented by Transparency International in Bosnia and Herzegovina since February 2004, in four years time received over 8500 complaints from citizens and legal entities through the free phone line 0800 55555, by mail or by on-line complaints through www.ti-bih.org website.

The frequency of complaints indicates that citizens have the worst experience with institutions of local self-government (cantonal and municipal administrations). Complaints referring to the organs of local self-government are characterized by the expressed autocracy and abuse of power from local officials (mayors and chiefs of municipal departments), without the possibility of effective protection of citizens by municipal administrations.

The area of education also takes a high place when it comes to the number of complaints. The distribution of resources intended for educational institutions has not been done transparently and according to regulations, which leaves a huge space for manipulation. When it comes to higher education, the situation has long since become dramatically worsened, according to the incoming complaints, since they noticed the existence of price-list for the purchase of exams and enrolment at universities.

TI BiH has filed 15 complaints to authorized judicial bodies during the last four years, and was also included in monitoring a large number of cases which are in procedure and which citizens pointed out because of stalling the processes and unsolved cases. What characterizes the cases monitored by TI BiH, those processed by authorized prosecutor’s offices and courts, is procrastination, which is especially noticeable in the cases of so called “grand corruption”, which mainly refers to abuse of position in public companies. When it comes to the work of public companies, citizens emphasized: abuse of position by the management, appointing directors and board members on the basis of political suitability in order to gain unlawful benefits, unlawful dismissal of employees and malpractice. Furthermore, a great problem coming “from the inside” are irregularities in the process of privatization of the remaining companies owned by the state.

A very dangerous phenomenon which was from the very beginning pointed out by the citizens is that official bodies are not acting according to the court’s final verdict. The example of this practice is the Ministry of Finance of the RS Government not abiding by the verdict in the process of paying off material and non-material war damages in 366 cases, where even with decision of the BiH Constitutional Court for the government to pay off the damages the Ministry did not fulfill its obligations ordered by the court’s verdict. It is important to emphasize that, by the Law on amendments to the Law on the specification and manner of settlement of the internal debts of Republika Srpska ,the RS Ministry of Finance was obliged to pay off all due debts by December 31st 2007.

TI BiH has been appealing to the public and to authorized institutions about the unsettled situation in the area of public procurement, and because of incompatibility between the Public Procurement Law and other regulations, BiH has already endured tremendous damages, which are becoming greater every day, by postponing the amendment of the Law and not establishing proper systems of control or supervisory agencies for public procurements in progress. The most flagrant example of disobeying positive regulations on public procurement is the construction of RS Government building.

All the complaints of citizens and legal entities that were received and for which the TI BiH expert team, by analyzing available documentation, judged that they present the violation of laws and regulations, were reported to competent institutions. As a symbol of appreciation for its activism and its help to citizens, TI BiH received numerous acknowledgements and letters of support from all around BiH.

Using its experience gained from the received complaints, the Center produced and distributed a number of anti-corruption guides referring to different areas, which provided information to citizens about how to protect their rights. The project was supported by the German government, European Union and Swedish Helsinki Committee for Human Rights.