The current acting director of the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (ASK), Dušan Drakić, was the only one to apply for the competition to elect a full-term director, Televizija Vijesti has learned.
He will need the votes of four out of five members of the ASK Council to be elected, and some members of the Council have previously expressed doubts that the necessary majority will be secured. Drakić has been in his acting mandate since August 2024.
Only one candidacy was submitted for the position of director of ASK, and that, according to unofficial information from Televizija Vijesti, was from the current acting director, Dušan Drakić. The competition, which the Council re-announced last month, ended on December 29th.
The first attempt to elect a director failed in May last year. At that time, candidate Milica Milutinović also applied, Drakić was closer to the position with three votes, but he was one vote short of being appointed. The competition was not repeated for months, as the Council waited for amendments to the Law on the Prevention of Corruption.
However, the amendments to that law have not yet been adopted, and the law stipulates that four out of five Council members must support a candidate in order to receive a mandate. Even when the competition was announced in December, some Council members openly doubted that such a majority could be secured.
"I think we don't have the required majority, which is very large, as prescribed by law. I think this is the only council in the country that requires this kind of majority, meaning that out of five people, four are needed to vote for the election of the director," said Slavica Mirković, a member of the ASK Council, on December 8 last year.
Drakić also emphasized that ASK is the only institution in which such a large majority is required, but that he also understands the need for a unified position of the Council.
"That position, I've become convinced over the last year or more, that it shouldn't be three out of five or four out of five, but five out of five because that director has a really big burden. There can't be any division in the Council," Drakić said on December 9 last year in the Reflektor show on Television Vijesti.
The ASK Council now needs to determine whether Drakić meets the requirements prescribed by the competition, then draw up a list of candidates who meet the criteria and finally interview the only candidate who applied. The deadline for all of this is January 30th.
Drakić was appointed acting director in August 2024, after the previous director, Jelena Perović, was dismissed, and proceedings are underway before the High Court for abuse of office. Thus, ASK has been without a full-time director for almost a year and a half, and the question is whether the new competition will finally resolve this situation.
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