Institute Alternative strongly condemns the attack on the activist of NGO LGBT Forum Progress in Podgorica and calls upon the state authorities to bring the culprits of this attack to justice and penalize them in accordance with the law.
The politics of impunity over attacks on LGBT persons, especially during and after the pride parades, contributes to the creation of atmosphere which encourages escalation of violence against members of LGBT community and its activists.
We call upon the state authorities, primarily the prosecution and the police, to contribute to prevention of violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation with effective prosecution of the perpetrators of these attacks.
We express solidarity with the activists of nongovernmental organisations protecting the rights of LGBT persons.
Replies to our initiatives addressed to the Ethics Committee and the Administrative Inspection related to the nomination of civil servants for local elections indicate passivity of these institutions and the vagueness of legal regulations governing political impartiality of civil servants.
The Ethics Committee and the Administrative Inspection are of the opinion that running for local councilors public officials do not violate the Law on Civil Servants and State Employees, which provides that they shall refrain from public expression of their political beliefs.
Both institutions believe that this provision applies only to the period of conducting activities as civil servants, and that restricting their right to stand as candidates in the elections was contrary to the Constitution, which in the Article 45 states that the right to to elect and to be elected is the right of every citizen of Montenegro who is 18 years old and has at least two years of residence in Montenegro.
However, the Ethics Committee has, in its reply, admitted that the Article 9 paragraph 2 of the Law on Civil Servants and State Employees is not fully clear whether the civil servant is obliged to refrain from any public expression of political beliefs at every opportunity or just during the working hours.
Therefore, the Ethics Committee believes, this norm can be interpreted in accordance with the Article 45 of the Constitution.
Institute Alternative finds this interpretation of the Law to be incorrect, because in comparative practice, with all due respect for the universal electoral right, public officials and directors in the public administration often have to freeze or leave their functions to be nominated for the elections.
Additionally, although the Administrative Inspection deemed to restrict constitutionally guaranteed rights law was unconstitutional, Institute Alternative recalls that the electoral law already limits the right to take any part in the election campaign to police officers and officials of the National Security Agency.
Hence, we consider the answers of the two institutions inconclusive. In the end, they show the vagueness of legal rules governing the political impartiality of civil servants as one of the main principles of the professionalization of public administration, but also the lack of harmonization of the Montenegrin legal regulations.
Furthermore, IA regrets that neither Administrative Inspection nor the Ethics Committee have not dealt with our request to examine whether public officials committed a serious breach of their obligations by expressing political beliefs during the conduct of activities, especially in the light of media reports indicating that certain employees and public officials participated in the campaign during working hours.
Lectures within the III module of the 2014 Public Policy School were held on Saturday and Sunday, May 17 and 18, 2014. The lecture entitled “Evaluation of Public Policies” was presented by Dragisa Mijacic, Executive Director of Institute for Territorial Economic Development (InTER) from Serbia.
At the beginning of the first working day the basic definitions of public policy and the policy cycle were reviewed. These topics were already discussed within I and II module, but since they represent starting point for the discussion on the evaluation of public policies, they were given another look. During a group exercise the participants tried to identify public policies in the articles from Montenegrin, Serbian and foreign newspapers, as well as to assess which of the six stages of the policy cycle (problem definition, defining policy options, the selection of possible solutions, the concept of public policy, implementation and monitoring of public policies, evaluation of public policies) have the identified public policies reached.
Based on the presented results, it was concluded that the most present in the media is the stage of defining policy options and the selection of possible solutions, because this is what politicians are mostly dealing with. On the other hand, the stage entitled the concept of public policy is the least present. When it comes to the stage of implementation and monitoring of public policy, the media are mostly interested in the problems of implementation, while the attention of the decision makers and the media is not focused on the evaluation of public policies.
During the lecture special emphasis was put on differentiation between politics and policy, monitoring and evaluation, and between “input”, “output” and “outcome”. It was pointed out that, despite the tendency of NGOs to engage in evaluating public policies, without cooperation with the government, which would provide the necessary quantitative and qualitative data, it is impossible to produce a credible document for this purpose. On the other hand, monitoring of public policies can be successfully done on the basis of the data found in the media. Consequently, civil society organizations more often engage in this kind of policy work. Thereafter, the logical framework matrix was thoroughly discussed.
Through a more detailed look into the stage of evaluation of public policies, participants learned more about different definitions and purposes of evaluation, as well as types of evaluation (formative, summative, prospective, ex-ante, mid-term, final, ex-post, periodic, ad hoc) and criteria for evaluation.
Part of the seminar was devoted to the evaluation of public policies in Montenegro, through consideration of examples of ex-ante evaluations under the Regulation on establishing the methodology for the preparation of a strategic plan for the development of local self-government.
The second day was finalized by considering the following topics: the Regulatory Impact Assessment – RIA, the evaluation of public policies in a multi-user environment, as well as the key questions of evaluation of public policies.
As the special emphasis was put on the practical application of knowledge, in addition to working in groups, students had the opportunity to discuss how the statistics and analysis may lead to improvement of public policies on the basis of the short documentary movie presented during the seminar.
Public Policy School is the project supported by the Commission for Allocation of Revenue from Games of Chance and implemented by Institute Alternative (IA) in collaboration with Centre for Research and Monitoring (CeMI).
Less than two weeks before election day, the Electoral Commission of the Capital Podgorica has not yet made public the electoral lists containing names of nominees for councilors of the City Parliament.
As stipulated by the Law on Election of Councilors and Members of the Parliament „municipal election commission shall have its website to immediately publish its acts and information of significance for carrying out of elections“.
However, besides the decisions on determining and proclamation of electoral lists from 15th and 30th April 2014, the website does not contain composition of the aforementioned electoral lists.
Consequently, citizens do not know who the people designated to represent their interests in the period to come are, and do not have access to information based on which they ought to make a decision on the election day.
The interested public is therefore compelled to familiarize themselves with the composition of electoral lists by exploring media reports, considering that even the political parties have not yet published electoral lists on their websites.
Specifically, this Law stipulates that “civil servants and state employees shall perform their tasks in politically neutral and impartial manner, in accordance with public interest” and that they are “obliged to restrain from public demonstration of their political convictions”.
On the other hand, certain names on the electoral lists raise suspicion that the persons currently holding office as deputies of ministers have been nominated for councilors.
In the meantime, Institute Alternative (IA) has submitted initiatives to the Administration Inspection of the Ministry of Interior and to the Ethics Committee in charge of monitoring the application of the Code of Ethics of Civil Servants and State Employees, in order to urge them to undertake appropriate measures and verify the composition of all submitted electoral lists and determine whether violations of the Law on Civil Servants and State Employees has been committed.
In the initiative submitted to Dubravka Božović, chairman of the Ethics Committee, it is stated the following: “As a reminder, Article 10 of the Code of Ethics of Civil Servants and State Employees (Official Gazette of Montenegro, no. 20/12) stipulates that „the employee shall be appropriately and neatly dressed and may not, by the way he/she is dressed (…) express political, religious or personal adherence which could cast a doubt on his/her neutrality and impartiality in the performance of duties.”
Montenegro, a member of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), is late with implementing its OGP obligations and still has not delivered the first version of its second Action Plan to the OGP Secretariat.
Although a member of the global Open Government Partnership initiative (OGP), Montenegro is late with meeting its obligations and still has not submitted the draft of the second Action Plan to the OGP Secretariat (the deadline was 30 April).
Member states of the initiative have the obligation to develop Action Plans which promotes the principles of transparency, accountability, development of new technologies and innovations, through a consultative process involving multiple stakeholders and making sure that the active participation of citizens and civil society is secured. Today, the OGP initiative gathers 64 countries and Montenegro became a member of the initiative in 2011 by adopting the first Action Plan. However, since the mid-2013, nothing has been done to prepare the second Action Plan.
Government tasked the cabinet of the Prime Minister (on its 64th session, held on 10 April 2014) to appoint a new coordinator who will form a new OGP Operating Team ”as soon as possible”, but this still has not been done. Government’s Office for Cooperation with NGOs was supposed to commence activities on the selection of NGO representatives in the Operating Team, in accordance with the Regulation on the cooperation of the Government and NGOs, no later than 7 days after the appointment of a new coordinator – which also has not yet begun. The delay in the implementation of these conclusions, among other things, made it impossible to continue the work on the preparation of the new Action Plan.
Having in mind the deadlines (Action Plan must be finalised by 15 June and its implementation must commence on 01 July), it is necessary to appoint the OGP coordinator as soon as possible, as well as the remaining members of the Operating Team (representatives of government and NGOs). We recommend that representatives of the Union of Employers and the Union of Municipalities should have a place in the new Operating Team. This would be in accordance with the principles of OGP regarding the inclusion of all segments of society in policy-making and building stronger ties between citizens and government.
The process of drafting the new Action Plan must be broadly participatory and must actively to involve citizens, which is increasingly less likely to happen due to the breaching of deadlines. The example of a good practice is Georgia, where 700 people attended and gave suggestions for activities and measures in the OGP Action Plan, with 19 meetings held in the 14 cities. Similar practices took place in the countries of Western Europe.
Implementation of the new OGP Action Plan will demand funds from the budget, and their allocation will be a clear indication of how real the Government’s commitment to the OGP principles are.
A representative of the Institute alternative, Dina Bajramspahić, participated in the conference “Open Government Partnership – European Regional Meeting” in Dublin, Ireland, on 8 and 9 May. It brought together over 300 representatives of governments and civil society organizations from European countries, international organizations, business and academic communities with the aim of exchanging experiences in the implementation OGP initiatives and providing support to better implementation of this instrument for global development and anti-corruption.
Institute Alternative (IA) is among the most transparent think tanks in the world, according to a survey conducted by an international non-profit organization Transparify.
In the report of this organization, published on May 7, IA received a five stars rating for transparency, together with the Centre for Research and Monitoring (CEMI) and the Centre for Democratic transition (CDT) and only 18 research centers more out of a total 169, which were covered by the study.
We thus placed ourselves among the prestigious think tanks such as Bruegel from Belgium and Overseas Development Institute from United Kingdom. Montenegro received the highest ranking among the total number of 47 countries surveyed.
„Transparify strongly believes that financial transparency boosts the credibility of a think tank’s research findings and policy recommendations, and is keen to see the leaders in the field receive the credit they deserve”, the letter of Till Bruckner, PhD, this organization’s advocacy manager, sent to Stevo Muk, president of the IA’s Managing Board, reads.
Think tanks covered by the report were ranked according to the level of transparency in presenting their funding sources..
Those organizations which received a five stars ranking enable citizens and the public to access clear and precise information about who funds them, with how much money and for which activities and projects. However, only a minority of 21 think tanks fulfils these criteria.
“Surprisingly, we found more highly transparent think tanks in Montenegro than in the entire United States”, reads the report’s summary, while the entire document is available here.
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Less than two weeks before election day, the Electoral Commission of the Capital Podgorica has not yet made public the electoral lists containing names of nominees for councilors of the City Parliament.
Montenegro, a member of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), is late with implementing its OGP obligations and still has not delivered the first version of its second Action Plan to the OGP Secretariat.