Opposition demands resignation of Interior Minister Dacic over Milic case

Seven opposition parties have asked the Serbian Assembly for the removal of Ivica Dacic as Interior Minister. The trigger is the arrest of Veselin Milic, former chief of the Belgrade Police Directorate, in the Senjak inquiry.

In addition to the removal, the opposition wants an urgent session of the Defence and Internal Affairs Committee, to assess the state of the interior services and identify political responsibility for failures in police oversight.

The opposition’s case

The joint request, signed by pro-European opposition parties including the Freedom and Justice Party, the Democratic Party, the Green-Left Front, the Movement of Free Citizens, Serbia Centre, the People’s Movement of Serbia and Nova, argues that the arrest of an official who ran the Belgrade police for two terms shows the depth of a systemic crisis.

Opposition representatives say that the highest political responsibility for Veselin Milic’s record over recent years lies with Ivica Dacic, who publicly defended his appointment as Belgrade police chief on several occasions. By their account, the minister did not launch any internal review of past scandals at the Belgrade police, nor did he respond to public doubts about how the force was operating.

Demands point by point

The request lists three specific measures:

• a dismissal vote on Minister Dacic through Assembly procedure
• an emergency Defence Committee session on the state of the police forces
• the creation of an inquiry committee into the work of the Belgrade Police Directorate over the past five years

The political responsibility of the Interior Minister is not exhausted by personal involvement in criminal acts, it covers every form of failure in overseeing the police and in appointments to key positions in the system, reads the joint opposition statement.

Government response

The Serbian Progressive Party and the Socialist Party of Serbia, whose joint lists provide the Interior Minister, dismissed the request as a pre-election manoeuvre. Brnabic, the Speaker of the National Assembly, said there are no grounds to pause the electoral law debate for a ministerial session, but that the Defence Committee can debate systemic issues in regular procedure.

Dacic had not personally responded to the dismissal request as of publication. In earlier remarks he said the Milic arrest does not show systemic weakness but rather the system working, since it was triggered by a police investigation and a prosecutor’s decision.

Political backdrop

The opposition’s request comes as the ruling majority enters the final phase of passing the electoral laws and as parliamentary elections are expected to be called for autumn. The opposition says it will not drop the request until it receives an answer on convening the Defence Committee.

Boban Stojanovic, a political scientist, said the Milic case is shifting the focus of the pre-election campaign from economic themes to rule of law and oversight of police services.

Will the dismissal request enter the Assembly’s agenda before parliamentary elections are called?