New Year’s Eve police magic

The Ministry of Interior and the Serbian Government need to provide an explanation of Police Director dismissal. The appointment of new Police Director should be fully transparent.

By Saša Djordjević (BCSP) / Photo: N. Radić
@Bambayay

The magic wand of Police Director stopped working. Milorad Veljović is no longer leading the police but he is now advising the Prime Minister on the issues of regional and national security. It is peculiar, to say the least, that a dismissed director is appointed as an advisor to the Prime Minister. This is probably a compromise, owing to the fact that Veljović did spend 9 years as the Head of Police Directorate after all, during which he survived three different ministers of interior and four different governments. The procedure of dismissal is not new, if taken into account that even a number of police generals were transferred to the Department for Enhancing the Work of Police (which is an organisational unit on which there is no information in the MoI’s Information Booklet). Be that as it may, it is clear that the real reasons for the dismissal are hidden.

To fully comprehend what is going on it would require that the Ministry of Interior (MoI) and the Government provide an explanation pertaining to this particular dismissal. Two official press releases were published on 31 of December. The Serbian Government announced that Veljović has been dismissed from his duty. The MoI released information that the incumbent head of Directorate for Traffic Police, Vladimir Rebić, will assume the role of the Acting Director of Police. As a reason for the dismissal it was stated that the Head of Police, Milorad Veljović, has met all the legal requirements for retirement. The Police Director could have been retired as early as three years ago, before the previous call for this position was announced, the call that saw Veljović re-appointed. Moreover, the new Draft Law on Police stipulates that the incumbent Head of Police should remain at this position until the mandate expires. Also, the process of dismissal would have been far more peaceful if the retirement was the only reason behind it.

The moment of the launching of the dismissal procedure is truly peculiar, because on 26 of December 2015, in a police action named The Cutter, 80 people were arrested on the charges that, starting from 2004, they committed a number of acts in the areas of financial crime and corruption. It is worth remembering that Veljović has been the Head of Police since 2006. There is probably no other person in Serbia with better knowledge of all the police investigations that were initiated in the previous decade. The public has the right to know whether the work of Police Director was not satisfying or there were some serious malfunctions in the work of Police Directorate. If this does not happen, the only logical conclusion remains the same one reached on the occasion of the dismissal of police generals—the political interests are still the main criteria for dismissals in the police.

The appointment of new Police Director should be fully transparent. The official press releases make no mention of the launching of a new call for the appointment of Police Director. This was not mentioned in the speech delivered by the Minister of Interior on this occasion, but the only information that was given was about the reasons for deciding to nominate Rebić for the position of the Acting Director and how the Government, no surprise here, had accepted that nomination. There are already speculations regarding Rebić as the new Police Director, which is not appropriate. The reasons are not that the former Head of Directorate for Traffic Police is not fit for the position, but that not a single procedure prescribed by the law for appointing the Police Director was followed. There are still no open calls, the Commission has not been formed, the list has not been completed, the Minister of Interior did not nominate a candidate and the Government did not appoint it.

Now it is the right time to fulfil the promise made by the Ministry in early 2015 that stated the criteria for the human resource management in the police will be professional merits and personal integrity. If political interests remain the main criteria for appointments the whole police reform process makes no sense. The debate on new Police Director should not be a discussion regarding the affiliation of the candidate to political parties or certain individuals, but rather on how to work on the MoI’s priorities and whether they are capable of it. The minimum requirement is that the new Police Director is a professional and has an understanding of the importance of depoliticisation of police, as well as to be aware of the changes that will be introduced once the Law on Police, currently in the Parliament, is adopted. Lastly, the scenario of Veljović’s re-appointment should also be avoided, when for a period of longer than one year there were no public calls launched, or to have a situation with having heads of departments in acting capacity for periods of 17 months, the case in point being the Criminal Police Directorate.

The article was originally published in online magazine Peščanik.
Translated by Bojan Elek.