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Spreading hatred in the Assembly, abusing the parliamentary function or hiding information of public interest today should be a thing of the past. This is prohibited by the Code of Conduct for MPs, which they adopted by vote. Defending the Code, the parliamentarians reiterated that it was good, while the Open Parliament initiative demanded the withdrawal of the proposal for that text. They claim that it will not serve to fight corruption and protect the public interest.
Today, the government deputies tried to explain to the public that the text of the Code is not as bad as it is said.
“I believe that this Code will improve the dialogue and the functioning of the parliament itself,” said Aleksandar Mirković of the SNS.
“SNS and Aleksandar Vučić are in favor of peace, democracy, stability, a dignity on the political scene,” says Uglješa Mrdić.
Maybe so in the next session. On the day of the voting on the Code, they seemed to want to take the last chance to settle accounts with those not present in parliament. Today it was the turn of cartoonist Predrag Koraksić Koraks.
“Can a normal mind sit and express its artistic idea by digging, drawing the graves of the president of the republic. This can only be done by a naked patient,” says Srbislav Filipović.
The newly adopted Code will not be able to prevent this, says Rasha Nedeljkov of the CRTA organization.
“What we have seen is that some MPs tried to ‘make up the dead’ with amendments, but essentially there will be no mechanisms forcing MPs not to spread hatred,” says Nedeljkov.
And the solution to such situations would be to simply do your job.
“The moment they start talking about some opposition leaders who are not there, instead of talking about the agenda, the president of whatever party it is, interrupts them and returns them to what is on the agenda,” he says Zlatko Minić from Transparency Serbia.
But that doesn’t seem to be their goal, Minic notes.
“You see that practically the only objective is to try to formally comply with that negative assessment that was received from GRECO,” he says.
And GRECO is an organization for the fight against corruption in the Council of Europe, which in its recommendations to Serbia also mentioned the adoption of the Code of Conduct for deputies. Because we didn’t do that in 2016, we received a negative review from them.
“This is just one of a series of very wise for the government, very damaging for the public, chosen from the list of problems that various international institutions and initiatives have encountered in the functioning of the rule of law in Serbia,” says Nedeljkov.
As in the case of electoral conditions, so it is with parliament. The government has chosen only those recommendations that give the appearance of striving for improvement, Nedeljkov added.
“All of this reminds me now with the Code, as if we solved the problems we have with traffic jams by opening a discussion about the aisles for flying cars. Which is certainly useful, but it doesn’t make sense,” says Zlatko Minić.
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