Necessary restrictions and control of "official's campaign"

Monitoring of "official's campaign" as a form of abuse of public resources, which Transparency Serbia (official chapter of Transparency International) conducted for the fourth time, shows the continuing trend intensifying of media visible activity of public officials in the election campaign, thus ensuring presence in prime time and the pages of the media that are worth more than any paid add. We emphasize that the activities that are the subject of our monitoring (visits to factories, schools, opening of objects, "ribbon cutting" and the like) do not represent urgent tasks of government officials, nor were those events in which senior officials are obliged to attend.

Truthfully, "official's campaign," as a "supplement" to regular party promotions are used by all politicians in power since 1990. However, it is worrying that according to the findings of research that was conducted by Transparency 2012, this form of abuse of public resources and opportunities for promotion, continues. Thus, five years ago, former President of the Republic and the Government, Tadic and Cvetkovic, had a 3.3 and 2 promotional activities per one week of the campaign, several times higher than in non-election period. Instead of reducing or stopping this harmful practice, its intensity enhanced, therefore in the electoral process in following years the current prime minister and future president Vučić had 3.5 (2014), 4.5 (2016) and 5.5 (2017) of such activities in each week of the campaign. It is important to mention that official's campaign was no less intensive with persons that are not candidates in the elections, in which most prominent ones in 2017 were ministers Šarčević and Udovicic.

This phenomenon, besides damage to public resources, significantly increases the imbalance in the representation of candidates in the elections. This problem is not resolved by amending the law, and the reaction of state authorities, despite recommendations that Serbia received from relevant international organizations (OSCE / ODIHR) and the existence of successful legislation from other countries that Transparency Serbia pointed out.

The most controversial event of this year's "official's campaign" is the opening of the athletic stadium in Novi Pazar, the event organized by the Government of Serbia. People from other places were transported by buses for this promotion, whereas the speeches and statements by officials (and not the reason for gathering) took prime time of news programs. This year's campaign will be remembered for the fact that some footages of using resources of public enterprises at party rallies appeared in public (footage of Al Jazeera Balkans from Mladenovac), and public testimony and statements about the pressures that public sector employees should attend party rallies.

Activities of Ministers and the Prime Minister again "were related" to the party rallies in the same towns. Official vehicles had been deployed for transportation to rallies by some ministers who are not covered by the Regulation on determining activities of security protection. Regarding the right of Ministers to use the official vehicles, there is a controversial opinion of the Anticorruption Agency from July 2016. Since this opinion might be wrongly interpreted by the ministers, Transparency Serbia sent a letter to the Agency with a proposal to issue a new opinion and to inform the public and officials about the rules. The ministers under the Decree of the Government are entitled to use official vehicles 24 hours a day, but only for official purposes and not to participate in the election campaign or to do other private activities. Only the Ministers of Foreign and Internal Affairs and Defense are exempted from this rule, as well as persons who have threats to their safety, according to the SIA. Everything else, by our firm belief, represents abuse of public resources and violation of Article 29 of the Anticorruption Agency Law. These rules should otherwise be amended, for which we made concrete proposal during the drafting of the new Anticorruption Agency Law.

Being that in Serbia almost every year we have elections, setting up of tighter legal restrictions for the misuse of public resources and to conduct official's campaign, as well as the establishment or strengthening of the independence of the body that could suppress this phenomenon (the Anti-corruption Agency, Regulatory Body for Electronic Media, inexistent Supervisory Committee from the Article 99 of the Law on Election of MPs) should be a priority of the National Assembly as soon as the current period of self imposed suspension of its work ends.

Transparency Serbia

Belgrade, April 12, 2017.