Commission for Implementation of the Anti-Corruption Strategy of RS without independent members

Banja Luka, 12. February 2015 – For the second time, Transparency International Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH) received a Notice from the RS Ministry of Justice annulling the Public Call for Appointment of Members of the Anti-Corruption Strategy Implementation Commission on behalf of civil society, media and academia. organizations.

The first Public Invitation was published in April 2014. It was annulled due to the fact that there were no applications from the academic community and the media, and two applications were received from civil society organizations, including TI BiH. The repeated public call was announced in August 2014, and TI BiH only received an official notification after 6 months that the call was canceled again, because there were no registered candidates in front of the academic community. This Notice does not state that the Public Invitation will be re-announced, which leads to the conclusion that the Commission for the Implementation of the Strategy will be left without independent members.

Apart from the devastating fact that the academic community is not interested in participating in this body, TI BiH also considers unacceptable the approach of the RS Government, ie the Ministry of Justice, which twice annuls the entire Public Invitation, although members of civil society and media could be appointed. It is obvious that there was no intention to enable the participation of civil society, at least as a supervision over the work of the Commission, because certainly only an observer role is envisaged for these members.

Regardless of the attempts to prevent independent supervision of the work of institutions, TI BiH will monitor the implementation of the Strategy, if its implementation is started, given that the previous RS Anti-Corruption Strategy did not yield any results, nor was there a methodology for monitoring its implementation by the institutions in charge of implementing the Strategy.
Press rls – 12 2 2015 doc