To respect the Law on prevention of conflict of interest

By the decision of Republic Board for Resolving Conflict of Interest, 8 th of March 2006., it is determined that vice president of Executive Council of Autonomous Province of Vojvodina Mr Tihomir Simic, violated the Law by performing at the same time with his public function, consultancy business in the enterprise “Srbija” BK-PTT for more than a year. Board concluded that it was harder violation of the Law and therefore pronounced the strongest measure in concrete case - public announcement of recommendation for official to resign the post.

In previous implementation of the Law it was shown that measurements delivered by the Board in the cases of determined violation of the Law were mainly respected even if they weren't bidding, since Board works as a political impartially body, whose members enjoy great reputation in public, and also because political parties and public organs avoided to find themselves in the negative context in the eyes of potential voters because of acting of public officials in contrary to the Law.

Further behaviour of the official by the recommendation of the Board depends on assessment of his own (resignation is a personal act), on the party that nominated him for this function (in this case PSS – Force of Serbia Movement) and on the parliament of Vojvodina that elected him for this function and that has also power to resolve him.

However, Transparency Serbia considers that the arguments Mr Simic gave in his statement that he won't obey the recommendation of the Board is not appropriate and that it could be understood as the invitation to other functionaries not to respect the Law. Mr Simic stated that he will resign only when members of the Government of Serbia related to some corruption affairs, do so. Transparency Serbia considers that stated affairs should be the subject of consideration of authorized organs (police, prosecutor, courts) and resolved, but alluding to them must not undervalue the decision of the Board for resolving the conflict of interest, which in so far work showed that to violators of the Law on prevention of conflict of interest proceeded in the same way, regardless of their connection to Government of Serbia.

Transparency Serbia also reminds that by the results of public opinion survey made in 2005 large part of citizen of Serbia shows low tolerance to violation of regulations on prevention of conflict of interest from the functionaries and pleads for severe measurements towards offenders than the ones that already exist in present Law.

Belgrade March 21st 2006.

Press office