SERBIA ON THE ROAD OF THE RULE OF LAW

Today, Serbia starts creating a system for the fight against corruption. New National Strategy for the Fight Against Corruption represents a clear indicator that our country is confidently moving forward on the road of rule of law, emphasized minister of justice and public administration on today's public debate on draft version of the National Strategy for the Fight Against Corruption in „Palata Srbija“ in Belgrade.

Selakovic said that corruption today represents one of the greatest illness of modern society getting into its pores and as such impairing state legal system. He emphasized that in a state ruled by corruption the fear is born and laws and justice lose their fundamental meaning - that is to protect citizens from any kind of reprisal and ensure sense of security.

„State has a task to create for its citizens an efficient and safe system that will enable law enforcement and rule of law, while it is up to its citizens to observe those laws. What is corruption than unlawful activity and non-observance of rules imposed by the state", minister Selakovic said.

Minister noted that exactly guided by the aim of creation of an efficient system for combating corruption, work on a strategy for the fight against corruption started and all relevant state and international institution, non-governmental organisation, media representatives as well as academics took part in its elaboration. „Basic principle we all agreed upon is zero tolerance towards corruption. Developing system where there are no protected and exempted ones and where no one can escape the hand of justice“, emphasized the minister.

Selakovic emphasized that equally important domain in the fight against corruption is the prevention and that this is the reason why all potential aspects of corruptive behaviour must be removed in order to decrease their consequences for the system and society in the future. „First and fundamental step of prevention must be to raise citizens' awareness about what represents corruptive behaviour", said minister Selakovic and added: „In order to prevent the occurrence of corruption in economy, judiciary, state authorities, health institutions, education etc. we must start from an individual who we shall educate and who will tomorrow know what are the consequences if he breaks the law."

During his speech, minister said that the assumption for an efficient systemic fight against corruption is a consistent implementation of the strategy and action plan. „To avoid the strategy becoming only a list of nice wishes and dead letter on paper, working group is already defining an action plan that will contain a number of concrete activities for achieving defined objectives. For the first time in an action plan we will also have concrete instruments that will measure efficiency of goals implementation and enable monitoring of strategy realisation in everyday life“, Selakovic concluded.