In the elections for five members High Council of Prosecutions (HPC) held on Tuesday (December 23), 762 public prosecutors have the right to vote.
Experts emphasize the importance of these elections and point to never-greater public interest, and in the media the election is described as a struggle for control over judiciary, writes the Contemporary Politics portal.
Za pro-regime media, the elections are a question of the future of the Supreme Public Prosecutor Zagorke Dolovac, which has recently become one of the main villains for the ruling party.
Independent media and the expert community warn that through the election of members of the Supreme Court, the government will try to take full control over the prosecution, by electing those who are allegedly close to Nenad Stefanović, to the Chief Public Prosecutor of the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade who is reputed to be a loyal executor of the commands of the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić.
Tightening the party ring around the judiciary
The elections for some of the members of the Supreme Judicial Council take place at the end of a year marked, for a good part of the public, by an unexpected "war" between the executive power and parts of the judiciary, primarily the Public Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime (TOK), which initiated proceedings, among other things, against former ministers Goran Vesić and Tomislav Momirović and the current minister Nikola Selaković.
Stories about the government's attempts to bring the remaining parts of the judiciary under control have been circulating in the public domain for months. As an additional argument for such claims, the proposal to amend judicial laws submitted to the assembly by the deputy of the Serbian Progressive Party, Uglješa Mrdić, is perceived.
With the allegations that "part of the prosecution and the judiciary have been taken away from the state", Mrdić submitted proposals for five judicial laws that refer to changes in existing legal solutions that regulate the organization and jurisdiction of courts, prosecutors' offices and the High Council of Prosecutors.
Voting for members of the Supreme Court lasts from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at 13 polling stations in Serbia, that is, at the addresses of the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office and the Appellate Public Prosecutor's Offices in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš and Kragujevac.
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