Representatives of the opposition in the National Assembly of Republika Srpska (NARS) believe that the proposed legal solution for forming an auxiliary police unit is pointless and that the ultimate goal is “creating a party army of the ruling SNSD.”
Those views were expressed by delegates from the PDP and SDS during the discussion on the Proposal for Amendments to the Law on Police and Internal Affairs under urgent procedure, whose proposer is the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the RS.
Delegate Bojan Kresojevic from PDP said that he noticed that the Ministry of Internal Affairs refers to challenges due to increasingly frequent humanitarian and natural crises.
“An institutional response is indeed needed, but we do not have commodity reserves, and therefore, introducing an auxiliary police unit is pointless. It’s like making a cake for which you only have the strawberry on top but no sponge,” added Kresojevic.
Therefore, as he said, he is not sure that the intention of forming an auxiliary police unit is aimed at strengthening the state.
“It is just as pointless as the fact that today we have a proposal to allocate 50 million BAM from the RS budget for lobbying, and three months ago, you expelled European Union (EU) ministers from RS,” concluded Kresojevic.
The head of the parliamentary club of the SDS, Ognjen Bodiroga, believes that if the intention of the proposer is sincere, the political timing for it is wrong.
“Relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) are bad, an atmosphere of fear has been created, and therefore the timing for this is not favorable,” added Bodiroga and said that to him, this looks like a plan to form a “party army of SNSD.”
“Well, it says in the proposal that they will receive weapons and have a salary, and I remind you that the salary of a police officer has been increased to 2.400 BAM, while the salary of a professor is 1.800 BAM,” he emphasized.
Delegates of SNSD support the proposed formation of an auxiliary police unit and describe the opposition’s claims as inappropriate and malicious.
The Minister of Internal Affairs of the RS, Sinisa Karan, stated in the NARS that the reason for establishing an auxiliary police unit is to raise security to a higher level, especially in periods of emergencies caused by humanitarian crises. In the previous period, as he said, we witnessed sudden dangers to life, health, and property of the population caused by natural or human factors, namely natural disasters in the form of major floods, fires, landslides, and other unpredictable situations that occurred throughout RS.
“By forming an auxiliary police unit, the Ministry could respond more efficiently to the mentioned challenges, because it has been shown in practice that the active number of police officers in emergency situations is not sufficient and that certain circumstances require the engagement of a larger number of police officers,” stated Karan.
In addition to emergencies caused by natural disasters and crises caused by epidemics, for a long time, we have also been facing, as he said, the problem of the influx of illegal migrants, which, in addition to a humanitarian crisis, also causes a security crisis. He claims that the Ministry of Internal Affairs may find itself in a situation where it cannot, from the regular police force, assign a sufficient number of its members for a longer period for these purposes, that is, for performing tasks of preventing and eliminating security incidents and preserving security itself in connection with the migrant crisis.
According to Karan, such a legal solution for the mentioned situations also exists in the legislations of EU countries and countries in the region, and legal solutions are the same or similar in Croatia, Slovenia, and Serbia.
“We lack about 1.000 police officers. Just one piece of information speaks enough, and that is that police officers in RS have more than two million overtime hours,” he added.
Karan claims that there have been malicious statements in the public regarding the formation of the auxiliary police unit.
“This is not a reserve unit nor a territorial defense. This is an auxiliary unit, assistance to the active police unit,” explained Karan.
