TS: Nominees for Anti-Corruption Agency Chief Should Be Presented in Parliament

Transparency International logp

The Transparency Serbia (TS) non-government organization announced on Feb. 23 that it had submitted an initiative to the Serbian Parliament for the ongoing procedure for selecting the director of the Anti-Corruption Agency to include the presentation of candidates at the next session of the parliament.

“The law does not envisage an obligation to present the candidates, either before parliamentary committees or to the plenum. The MPs have only been given the candidates’ work resumes and information about their testing, but not the work programs. Transparency Serbia deems that insufficient for the MPs to make an informed decision about the best candidate for this important function,” the statement reads.

Together with the initiative, delivered to Speaker Vladimir Orlic and all caucuses, TS also included an analysis of the candidates’ programs, which they submitted in the first phase of the selection procedure, carried out by the Judicial Academy.

Transparency Serbia has urged the legislators not to merge the debate about the selection of the Anti-Corruption Agency’s director, which is 24th of the 26 items on the agenda, with the remaining items. “The presentation and interviewing of the candidates before the Assembly would also provide the voters with the opportunity to see the extent to which the MPs are interested in the future operation of the Agency and whether they truly make decisions in the parliament,” it was concluded in the statement.