Source: "Blic"
Lately the media have been reporting that none of the procedures instituted against political parties for failure to comply with the legal requirement to submit reports on their funding have been completed, that many procedures are now statute-barred and that the same obviously awaits all the remaining procedures. That “news“ is bad, but it is actually not surprising at all, because every day we are witnessing instances of failure to initiate proceedings or allowing cases to become statute-barred when the perpetrators are those in power.
This is why I think that an initiative submitted recently by Transparency Serbia did not attract the attention it deserves. In short, it requests extension of the statute bar for instituting and hearing of infringement proceedings. The imitative is good and it certainly should be accepted. Apart from the case overload of magistrates’ courts, the unwillingness to tackle those “delicate“ cases etc., a reason for this failure to call the “mighty” to accountability is certainly the fact that statutes of limitation are short.
The Misdemeanours Law stipulates that proceedings cannot be instituted if one year has lapsed since the occurrence of infringement. Admittedly, it leaves a possibility to extend the statute of limitation up to 5 years by special laws in the fields of customs, foreign trade, foreign exchange transactions, sales of goods and services and public revenues. In this context, it is indicative that a possibility for extension of the statute of limitation for infringement liability is reserved for infringements committed mostly by “common“ citizens, but it cannot be extended for infringements in the field of fight against corruption, freedom of information, public procurement, funding of political parties etc. committed mostly by those in power.
Extension of the statute of limitation in these fields as well would not only increase chances for perpetrators to bear the consequences they deserve, but would also eliminate an obvious illogicality. For if the institute of statute of limitations should provide an opportunity to avoid liability for violation of the law to anyone at all, would it not make more sense if it was a “common“ citizen instead of the “government“?
