The Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (ASK) will once again invite deputies who are also heads of municipalities or local parliaments to leave one of their positions, and if they do not do so, they will initiate proceedings against them, "Vijesti" has learned unofficially.
The newspaper's source from the KAS said that the Law on Prevention of Corruption does not prescribe deadlines in which those officials should leave one of the seats, but that if they do not do so, the agency will initiate proceedings "in a short period of time".
According to the aforementioned act (Article 109), an assembly member who also performs duties in the state administration, local administration and local self-government bodies, can be fined from 500 to 2.000 euros.
At the end of September, the ASK annulled last year's decisions of that institution, while she was at its head Jelena Perović that the then presidents of the municipalities of Bar, Kolašin and Tuzi, Dušan Raičević, Vladimir Martinovic i Nick Djelosaj, are not in a conflict of interest even though, in addition to that position, they were also in the parliamentary position. Ten days later, at the beginning of October, the institution he leads Dušan Drakić she invited parliamentarians who are concurrently in the positions of president or vice president of the municipality, as well as president or vice president of municipal assemblies, to leave one of their positions.
However, none of them have done it yet. Member of the New Serbian Democracy and leader of Nikšić Marko Kovacevic, he said yesterday in the program "Colors of the Morning" on "Vijesti" Television that he will not give up any armchair, saying that the law cannot be applied retroactively.
"I received a letter that the previous decision, which was irregular and called for the newly adopted law to apply retroactively, was annulled... The decisions they made in the past as an institution produced certain legal consequences... If the law could not acts retroactively, even what produced legal consequences in that sense cannot act retroactively. Because the mandates have already started according to their decisions", he assessed.
The remaining members of parliament who perform the other function, the leader of the Bar Dušan Raičević (Democratic Party of Socialists) and the head of the local parliament Branislav Nenezić (Social Democrats), did not answer the question of "Vijesti". Raičević told the newspaper at the beginning of July that, "if it becomes a legal obligation", he will give up one of his functions.
The presidents of municipalities and local assemblies could be MPs at the same time, because until recently the current regulations did not specify what local government bodies were and what local self-government bodies were.
According to the anti-corruption law valid until mid-June, the functions of the municipal president and deputy were not incompatible because the municipal leader was not a body of local administration (secretariats, agencies, municipal administration...), but of local self-government (president of the municipality and the municipal assembly) - category that was introduced in the new regulation, which was not in the previous one.
ASK reminded of this in September of last year, announcing that Raičević, Martinović and Đeljošaj did not violate the provisions of the act in force at that time.
In the newly adopted regulation, the Law on Prevention of Corruption (the word "prevention" no longer has the letter "j"), local self-government bodies are also mentioned. Therefore, at the end of August, immediately after Drakić became its head, the ASK announced that the positions of president and vice president of the municipality, as well as president and vice president of the municipal assembly, but not the position of councilor, are incompatible with the position of deputy.
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