Bad Laws Are Hard to Change

Several important anti-corruption laws were passed in recent years. Complete novelties at the time, their flaws and good points became apparent come implementation time. In the meantime experts have come forth with a number of proposals for amending them. Bills were drafted and that was it.

The Political Party Financing Law was passed in July 2003 and took effect on Jan. 1, 2004. Transparency Serbia pointed out the need for changes as early as November that year and in March 2005 parliamentary officials pledged that the job would be taken care of in a matter of months.

Lawmakers endorsed the Conflict of Interest Prevention Law in April 2004 and it has been enforced since January 2005. The Committee for the Prevention of Conflicts of Interest has been pushing for changes since the end of 2005. Then it was decided that corruption-related issues would be delegated to a special agency and a bill was drawn up. It eventually reached Parliament but was withdrawn after the latest general election for reworking.

The third crucial anti-corruption law, the Law on Free Access to Information, demonstrated its flaws in the implementation phase. It passed in November 2004. From the onset it was clear that putting the Ministry of Culture in charge of its implementation had been a mistake. This and other changes sought by experts have not been introduced to date even though amendments to the law were considered six months ago by MPs in order to harmonize it with the new Constitution.

Financing

The Political Party Financing Law introduced a new concept: the funding of parties and campaigns by the state and reimbursement for the winners after elections to decouple winning parties and donors. This was put to the test ahead of the 2004 presidential election, when then Finance Minister Mladjan Dinkic proposed reducing the sum set aside in the budget for campaign financing by a factor of 10. The proposal was withdrawn thanks to pressure from experts.

Later on, however, these same experts failed to push through additional changes to this law.

As early as November 2004, Transparency Serbia concluded that the Policy Party Financing Law had failed its first test, which was the June presidential election. TS president Vladimir Goati, TS program director Nemanja Nenadic, and former TS president Predrag Jovanovic did admit that the situation was much improved, although additional tweaking was required. They proposed 28 changes in the campaign financing provisions alone.

The problems were analyzed and a number of changes were recommended, among them, the specification of what percentage of the vote translates into what level of state funding. However, parties are not required to name or check the credit rating of their donors. It has been proposed that funding for elections for president be funded separately from elections for representative bodies. In addition, the law is far from clear when it comes to setting a limit on spending and fails to take into account what happens when several types of elections are held at the same time.

Experts wanted political parties and groups supporting independent candidates to have the same obligations because some parts of the law do not apply to these groups due to their ad hoc nature. In addition, the law addresses only campaign spending on advertising. Then there was the problem that parties and citizens' groups had no idea how much money they could count on.

The parliamentary Finance Committee has since set up a working group to put together the necessary amendments. Committee deputy chairman Radojko Obradovic announced in March 2005 that "amendments to Political Party Financing Law will be finished in a month or two" to eliminate existing problems. These include procedural issues and the lack of deadlines and legal penalties for failure to comply with the law.

The idea was to maintain the same approach to tackling corruption in that most campaign financing was supposed to come from the state. In addition, Parliament or another body was supposed to get additional powers to supervise spending, with all relevant information being available to the public. The committee consists of one representative of every party as well as two independent experts. Two and a half years ago, Obradovic said that both foreign and local experts would get their say once the draft was finalized.

By mid 2006 the parties and experts had reached consensus on several of the issues, including eliminating limits on private donations and their accessibility to the public.

Most of the parties also felt that a provision barring parties from deriving over 20 percent of their revenues from own property should also be scrapped.

But that was it. Officials explained that party financing would be regulated by a broader anti-corruption law establishing a special anti-corruption agency. That is the way things stand today. The future agency will monitor party financing, a job currently handled by the parliamentary committee and Election Commission.

Conflicts of Interest

The Conflict of Interest Prevention Law was supposed to undergo changes before the end of 2005 to expand its application to officials in institutions founded by the state, the province of Vojvodina, and local governments. This was pledged by Milan Dedijer, chair of the Committee on the Prevention of Conflicts of Interest, in November that year. Although Dedijer has since stopped making unrealistic predictions, the same cannot be said of his advocacy of changes to the law, including making officials' asset reports public documents.

The new anti-corruption agency bill introduced a host of changes in dealing with conflicts of interest. However, the Committee on the Prevention of Conflicts of Interest was strongly against putting a new body staffed by experts in charge of its job.

In late October 2006, the cabinet approved the agency bill. The agency was intended to be an independent body meant to take over for the conflict of interest committee, enforcing the National Strategy on Combating Corruption, coordinate the national anti-corruption effort, and propose new legislation and changes to existing corruption laws.

The bill incorporated a large portion of existing corruption laws, although it did introduce a number of new approaches. The most important of them was requiring officials to report conflicts of interest and the annulment of any decisions made by officials with conflicts of interest. In addition, officials were explicitly barred from using public funds and gatherings to endorse political organizations.

The only part of officials' asset reports open to the public were to be their state salaries and information on other offices held.

However, the bill never reached legislators because a new constitution was adopted, precipitating new elections. The newly-elected cabinet voted to withdraw the bill for re-evaluation.

Information

In March 2006, the parliamentary Committee on Culture and Information urged the cabinet to amend the Law on Information of Public Significance to put the Public Administration and Local Government Ministry in charge of supervising its implementation.

It was the Culture Ministry that was supposed to do the job, but the Committee claimed that it did not have the staff or the know-how to do it properly. At the same meeting, the Committee also approved an annual report on the implementation of the freedom of information law and welcomed the contribution of Information Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic.

Sabic pointed out at the time that it was necessary to provide mechanisms for evaluating the efficacy of the law, adding that the Public Administration and Local Government Ministry already had inspectors throughout the country and was thus in a position to
enforce the law.

In July 2006, Parliament did approve an amending bill, but not with the changes Sabic wanted. Instead, the law was amended to bring it into line with the Constitution. As a result, the information commissioner was given the authority to initiate evaluations of the constitutionality of laws and other regulations and it was stressed that he is elected by a majority of MPs.

If a person serving as information commissioner gets reelected before the end of his first term, his second term is to end seven years after the beginning of the first term. In addition, it was added that no person may serve as information commissioner more than twice.

In late 2007, a group of NGOs called for new changes to the information law. Non-government experts and Sabic himself are working on the new version. One thing that the draft aims to improve is protection for whistle blowers and the punishment of people responsible for breeches of the law, not those officially in charge. In addition, several provisions were clarified.

The bill has been sent to Parliament together with a petition containing 70,000 signatures. However, the leading parties have shown little interest.

Although the parties agree that changes are needed to the law, some, like the Serbian Radical Party, are reluctant to back a bill drawn up by NGOs. Others have announced that the cabinet will present its own bill, and the opposition parties willing to back the NGOs' version are a small minority.