BIRODI: Corruption Agency to Review Vucic Campaign
After Serbia's election commission said it lacks jurisdiction, BIRODI asked the Anti-Corruption Agency to determine whether Vucic is breaking the law by leading the Ujedinjena Srbija list.
BIRODI, the Bureau for Social Research, said in a statement on September 18, carried by the N1 news agency at 5:24 p.m., that Serbia’s Agency for the Prevention of Corruption must determine whether President Aleksandar Vucic is violating the country’s anti-corruption law. The trigger is Vucic’s decision, made while he still holds the office of head of state, to let his name become part of the name of an election list, “Aleksandar Vucic, Ujedinjena Srbija,” and to lead that list as its top candidate.
The question had already gone before the Republic Election Commission (RIK), which, according to BIRODI, declared itself not competent to rule on it. A day earlier, on September 16, RIK rejected citizens’ objections that Vucic was in a conflict of interest, calling them unfounded, the newspaper Danas reported. BIRODI’s statement warns that declining jurisdiction is not the same as finding no violation occurred.
“RIK’s ruling did not establish that there is no possible violation of the Law on the Prevention of Corruption. It simply took the position that RIK has no jurisdiction to rule on that violation, and that the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption is the body responsible for enforcing that law. This does not close the matter. On the contrary, it moves the question to the institution that is legally responsible for answering it,” BIRODI said in the statement.
What BIRODI wants investigated
The organization is asking for an answer to one question: does the president of Serbia, whose name appears on the election list and who is also its candidate, gain a political benefit for himself and for the list by carrying out presidential duties during the campaign, and does that amount to a conflict of interest or a violation of Article 50 of the Law on the Prevention of Corruption? It is also asking for a review of whether the presidential office, public resources, official events, media appearances made in his capacity as president, government websites and official state accounts are being used, directly or indirectly, to promote the election list, BIRODI said in the statement carried by N1.
This is not the first complaint BIRODI has filed with the Agency over the same campaign. According to Danas, the organization already submitted a complaint on September 14, at 9:18 a.m., citing Article 40 of the law, which bars officials from putting private interest ahead of the public interest. In that complaint, BIRODI asked the Agency to examine whether Vucic, by agreeing to have his name included in the list’s name and to run as its lead candidate, placed party interest above the public interest.
“This is not a question of Aleksandar Vucic’s right to be politically active. That right is not in dispute,” BIRODI said in the earlier complaint, adding that what is in dispute is whether a public official may put the authority gained through public office to work for party and campaign interests while still holding that office.
The question BIRODI put to the Agency reads:
Did President of the Republic Aleksandar Vucic, by agreeing to have his name become part of the election list’s name and to be listed first on that list, put his private political and party interest to work generating political benefit by using the authority and public recognition of the office he holds, thereby subordinating the public interest to a private one.
Why does the 2023 precedent matter?
A similar complaint has already reached the Agency once before. Savo Djurdjic, a retired judge of the Court of Appeals in Novi Sad, filed a complaint against Vucic on November 17, 2023, citing the same Articles 40 and 50 of the Law on the Prevention of Corruption that BIRODI is now invoking. The Agency dismissed that complaint in December of that year; Djurdjic was notified of the decision on December 8, 2023, when Dejan Damnjanovic headed the institution. Djurdjic publicly challenged the decision in an open letter, arguing that the Agency had, in his view, interpreted the constitution and the law selectively and had left out Article 111, which defines the president of the Republic as the holder of state unity.
In the same letter, Djurdjic pointed to a position the Agency had taken earlier. According to him, the Agency published an opinion on May 15, 2020, titled “Simultaneous Performance of the Office of President of the Republic of Serbia and a Function in a Political Party,” finding no legal obstacle to a president holding a party office at the same time. That opinion, still publicly available on the institution’s website, remains a basis the Agency could cite again when it responds to BIRODI’s current complaint.
Srpske Novine previously reported that RIK rejected objections to Vucic’s list and formed election commissions, formally clearing the way for voting to proceed on schedule.
The deadlines closing in on a decision
The election is set for October 25. Vucic has announced that he will resign as president on September 27, near the end of the campaign but still before election day. Whether the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption will rule on BIRODI’s complaint before that date, or whether the matter will be closed without a public hearing, as happened in 2023, is not yet known.
