ИЗВЕШТАЈ ДИМИТРИЈА МАРИНКОВИЋА О СТАЊУ ПОСЛОВА У ОКРУЗИМА НИШКОМ И ТОПЛИЧКОМ ИЗ 1881. ГОДИНЕ

Abstract: The report of the member of the State Council, Dimitrije Marinković, on the situation in the districts of Niš and Toplica constitutes a valuable testimony about the real state of affairs in the aforementioned police administrations at that time. Marinković warned the Minister of Police about the worrying increase in corrupt practices, especially the tendency of police officials to accept bribes and extort material benefits from citizens, with the local population already being rightly dissatisfied. Many police officials had already betrayed the trust of the local population, and their constant demand for bribes and new, completely illegal enrichments, greatly exceeded, in their arrogance, the abuses committed by the recent Turkish authorities. The unpleasant facts that Marinković presented to the Minister of Police were the exact opposite of what the Progressive Party supported and demanded in principle. Instead of a vision of progress and radical reform of the state apparatus, which the Cabinet had formally advocated, something completely different was happening in the county and district administrations of southern Serbia. In the distant Bojnik of the Pusta Reka county, as well as in Lebane, near the Turkish border, the notions of authority, rights and justice were significantly different from what high court officials such as Dimitrije Marinković stood for. These were the regions that had been annexed to the Principality of Serbia only a few years earlier. There, the new Serbian authorities, scattered in remote towns and villages, found themselves facing poor and very distrustful local residents. The arrogance and greed of many police officials were one of the main causes of the resounding electoral defeats that the Progressives suffered consecutively in the early 1880s. Keywords: police, district administration, abuses, bribery, malpractice, party agitation.