The administration Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, appointed by political lines

Sarajevo, July 15, 2011. – The House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, at the last meeting appointed the candidates for the Director of the Agency for the Prevention and Combat against corruption and his deputies by political lines, while there was no discussion about the ones proposed by the Commission for the selection and monitoring work of the Agency.

Namely, the Commission has submitted a list of 15 candidates and put forward three candidates with the highest score of votes – Ramiz Huremagic, Milan Krulja and Blanka Benkovic. However, members of the Parliament were not even asked about this proposal, but according to the agreement among political parties, they appointed Sead Liska for the Director and Dragan Slipac and Sreto Pekic for his deputies. It is necessary to mention that Sead Liska was only the third in the ranking, which was compiled by the Commission, Dragan Slipac was the sixth while Sreto Pekic was the last on the list of 15 candidates.

Transparency International of Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH) condemns such act of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH because it completely stultifies the whole procedure which was regulated in terms of election of the administration Agency, and the work of the Commission for the selection and monitoring of the Agency was thus ignored and made completely unnecessary.

It is interesting that the election of directors of the Agency waited more than a year and then in one day political parties decided on who would be nominated, which implies that delay was completely unnecessary, and the current work of the Commission for the election represented a waste of resources.

Such approach to the appointment of the administration of the most important anti – corruption body in the country calls into question its independence in the future work and once again shows that all institutions are trying to put themselves under the control of parties, even those that should fight against such a control.

The House of Representatives has proved, also in this case, that procedures during the appointment of personnel, and references and the ability of candidates don’t have any importance when political influence is involved, which gives a negative example to BiH citizens and undermines confidence in institutions.

TI BiH calls on the competent institutions to examine the authenticity and legitimacy of this kind of election of the administration Agency and to prevent further attempts at controlling and politicizing the most important institutions in BiH.