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Employment in Montenegrin municipalities – merit or party based?

Through the analysis „Employment in Montenegrin municipalities – merit or party based?“, Institute Alternative continues monitoring of the implementation of public administration reform in Montenegro, focusing on the local level, after publishing of several publications and monitoring reports dealing with reform processes in state administration bodies. The analysis has been prepared within the project „Corruption at the local level – zero tolerance!”, and the project focused on identification of the key issues at the local level in the areas of high risk for corruption.

The starting point are key challenges for the reform of civil service at the local level, followed by the analysis of the problems Montenegrin municipalities are facing in human resource management. In accordance with the framework of the project, special attention was given to the capacities for management of human resources in 14 municipalities. In order to throw light on the dynamics of local government reform, key strategic documents and legislative framework regulating the field of the civil service system in Montenegro have been analyzed. Information about the number of employees at the local level, as well as the decisions on employment/recruitment of local servants and employees in 2013 have been collected through free access to information requests. The overview of non-transparent recruitment practices at the local level has been done based on the analysis of newspaper articles published during 2013 and 2014.

Additional sources of information used were opinions of the local civil servants and councilors, as well as representatives of non-governmental sector, collected during fourteen consultative trainings in the Municipalities that were subject of the research, as well as during the panel discussion „Preconditions for transparent recruitment at the local level“, held on June 17, 2014 in Kolašin.

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Montenegrin Civilian Capacities for Peace Operations: Will Without Means?

Our new policy brief brings an insight into whether Montenegro is preparing for providing non-military, civilian contribution to peacekeeping.

The term civilian capacities (CivCap), as understood in the brief, includes civilians and other non-military personnel that participate in peace-building and state building missions, including the police and civilians in military missions.

This paper provides an overview of the current state of affairs when it comes to Montenegro’s capacities and institutional set-up for civilian peace operations.

Montenegro is at the very start of developing its policy in the area of civilian participation in the peace support missions (CivCap). It currently participates in several peace support missions, under UN, NATO and EU auspices, almost exclusively with armed troops. The police is starting to deploy its officers to missions, the civil protection units have not yet been formed and representatives of other institutions have so far not participated in missions. With NATO membership as a key goal, Montenegro has started to conduct activities aimed at establishing CIVCAP, as one of the required steps in the integration process. The process has not yet been institutionalized, but there seems to be a will in the administration that CIVCAP should be developed. The process is quite challenging for a small state with limited capacities and strong donor support for initial steps is crucial for its success. At the end of the paper, recommendations for concrete steps to take in order to develop the CivCap system are given.

This policy brief is a product of cooperation with the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP) and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), in the framework of a regional research initiative „Western Balkans Civilian Capacities in Peace Operations“, supported by the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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Special prosecution remains wishful thinking

Representatives of Institute Alternative, Stevo Muk and Dina Bajramspahić, participated today at the roundtable on the Draft Law on Special State Prosecution Office organized by the Ministry of Justice. On this occasion, they presented our comments, suggestions and proposals with regard to this Draft Law.

The Draft Law on Special State Prosecution Office, deliberated at the public hearing, is not a result of identified problems in the work of the hitherto Department for combating organized crime, corruption, terrorism and war crimes and the proposed solutions do not correspond to its actual needs. This is most evident from the fact that a minimum of Draft provisions is related to special prosecutors, so the Department will not undergo any substantial changes. Hence, the focus of the Draft Law is on the changes related to other subjects (state authorities, especially the Police and other authorities that will reassign their employees to the Special Prosecution Office, banks, etc.), while the issues related to the Special Prosecution Office are neglected or regulated in the same manner as before, which is very problematic.

In short, according to this Draft Law:

  1. The preconditions for the highest qualified legal experts, who have the capacity to conduct investigations in high-profile corruption and organized crime cases, to come to the position of Chief Special Prosecutor and special prosecutors have not been met.
  2. The security risks in the selection of the Chief Special Prosecutor and special prosecutors have not been reduced.
  3. Competencies are not defined in the manner which would allow Special Prosecution Office to attend to the most complex cases. On the contrary, the SPO will be swamped with cases of low-profile corruption.
  4. The authority of Chief Special Prosecutor in the Police Administration has not been strengthened.
  5. Prescribing performance evaluation measures for the Chief Special Prosecutor and special prosecutors is entirely omitted.
  6. Prescribing control procedures of dismissal of criminal complaints is entirely omitted.
  7. The procedure for determining the number of special prosecutors has not been established.
  8. Budgetary stability has not been provided and the budget amount determined for this Office is not known, since it is “drowned” within the overall budget of the State Prosecution Office.
  9. Special reporting practice to the Parliament has not been established nor any additional reporting practice to the Prosecutorial Council.

Although it may be redundant to repeat, we remind that every Progress Report issued by the European Commission brings the same assessments on the alarming state of affairs in the area of corruption and organized crime and particularly points out to the lack of track record of proactive investigations in this field. The burden of achieving results in this area is placed on the Special Prosecution Office. However, this Draft Law does not reflect even the slightest desire to actually improve the Special Prosecution Office, but only to have some “cosmetic” reforms.

Our comments can be found here

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Debate on the Report of the Commission for Control of Public Procurements

Our research coordinator, Jovana Marović, participated at the 70th meeting of the Committee on Economy, Finance and Budget. At this session, in accordance with the Article 142 of the Law on Public Procurement, the Committee considered the 2013 Performance Report of the State Commission for Supervision of Public Procurement Procedure. Jovana pointed out that the State Commission cannot be analyzed separately from the systemic problems in the area of public procurements related to the poor control over the implementation of procedures and public procurement contracts, lack of accountability for violations of legal provision, and lack of transparency. She noted that the proposed amendments to the Law on Public Procurement, which should enter parliamentary procedure soon, contain a number of problematic solutions, especially when it comes to the work of the State Commission. Therefore, these amendments should be improved through amendment procedure in the Parliament.

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Challenges of Cooperation between Civil Society and the Government in the Western Balkans

Research Coordinator at Institute Alternative Jovana Marović participated in the preparation of the analysis “Challenges of Cooperation between Civil Society and the Government in the Western Balkans”. The analysis was created within the framework of the project “Thinking for Governance”, aimed at the exchange of experience between the Visegrad countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary) and the civil society organizations from the Western Balkans on the role of these organizations in the negotiation process under Chapters 23 and 24. The analysis includes recommendations for improvement of the process of judicial reform, fight against corruption, human rights, and cooperation between civil society and state authorities in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia. Alongside Jovana, Marija Vuksanović, from Centre for Democracy and Human Rights, and Vlado Dedović, from Centre for Monitoring and Research, participated in the preparation of the part of the analysis related to Montenegro.

Publication can be downloaded here >

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What will the President talk about at the OGP summit at the UN?

Montenegro cannot boast with fulfilling obligations within Open Government Partnership, therefore it is not clear what will the President of Montenegro speak about at the upcoming meeting of this Initiative, which will be held on September 24 this year.

Nine Heads of State will speak at the United Nations in New York at the high-level event organized on the occasion of celebrating the third year of the initiative Open Government Partnership (OGP). Among the speakers are Barack Obama, the President of the United States, and Filip Vujanović, the President of Montenegro.

However, Montenegro does not have anything to boast with at the conference, because it is late with fulfillment of every obligation under this Initiative and since mid-2013 there were no activities in drafting the Action Plan which would aim to improve conditions in the areas promoted by this Initiative. This is the obligation of all member states of the Initiative.

Since the deadline for preparing the final version of the Second Action Plan for all member states was June 15, 2014, and for the beginning of implementation of the new AP was July 1, 2014, and Montenegro has not even begun drafting the Action Plan – we wonder what the President will say at the conference and how he will justify the Government’s failure to fulfill obligations and its general disinterest in OGP.

Member states of the Initiative are required to develop action plans that promote principles of transparency, accountability, new technology and innovation development, through several months’ consultation process involving multiple stakeholders and mandatory active participation of citizens and civil society. Today, OGP brings together 64 countries of the world, while Montenegro became a member in 2011 by adopting the First Action Plan. The importance of the Initiative is best illustrated by the presence of the President Obama at the OGP event on the sidelines of the UN’s General Assembly.

At the 64th session held on 10 April 2014, the Government has adopted the conclusion that puts the Cabinet of Prime Minister in charge of appointing “as soon as possible” a new coordinator who will form a new Operating Team of the Open Government Partnership. However, the public still does not know who the new coordinator is.

Furthermore, by the Government Conclusion, the Office for Cooperation with NGOs is tasked to commence activities on the selection of NGO representatives in the Operating Team in accordance with the Strategy of Cooperation of the Government of Montenegro and Non-Governmental Organizations, at the latest within seven days of appointment of a new coordinator. This activity has not yet begun, either. The delay in the implementation of these conclusions, among other things, prevented further work on the preparation of the new Action Plan.

It is necessary to appoint a coordinator of the Operating Team as soon as possible, as well as other members of the OT, including government and non-governmental organizations representatives. It is a recommendation of Institute Alternative to include representatives of the Montenegrin Employers Federation and the Association of Municipalities of Montenegro in the OT, in accordance with the principles of the Initiative related to inclusion of all segments of society in policy-making and building stronger connections between citizens and government. Additionally, we recommend allocating budget funds for the implementation of the Action Plan which will be the measure of the actual Government commitment to contribute to the realization of the objectives of the Initiative through conducting specific activities.

Dina Bajramspahić

Public Policy Researcher