(This publication is currently available only in Montenegrin — translation coming soon.)
Press release: Procurements Without Oversight
Although they belong to one of the six high-risk areas for corruption in Montenegro and improving control over the implementation of concluded contracts is a crucial criterion for the progress in the negotiation process under Chapter 23, control of public procurement is still limited and worrying.
The share of public procurement in the total GDP in 2014 will be about 15%, as estimated by the Ministry of Finance, which is almost twice more than in 2013. The huge amount money that is allocated from the budget for the procurement of goods and services is inadequately controlled. The reasons for this should be sought in the limited capacity of relevant institutions, lack of transparency, and responsibility for repeated violations of the Law on Public Procurement. In addition to being late with the adoption of amendments to the Law, the proposed amendments are debatable. They do not impose an adequate solution to control the implementation of public procurement contracts, since the Administration for Inspection Affairs is not capable to control, even while working at full capacity, more 5000 contracts concluded annually. Direct agreements are not included in this number.
Annexes to the agreement are not being published in Montenegro although they alter the basic provisions and meaning of the contract. This, consequently, leaves a lot of space for a significant corruption. Also, data on procurement that were concluded by direct agreement between the contracting authority and bidders are inaccessible, although on several occasions, the State Audit Institution indicated that the use of this procedure is being abused. Activities of the State Audit Institution in the implementation phase of the contract are of a great importance for the improvement of public procurement.
The Law does not define all possible offenses in public procurement procedures. For example, the purchaser shall not be liable for submitting incorrect or incomplete information. Moreover, there is still no established criminal responsibility for irregularities in public procurement, since the final judgment of corruption in this area has not yet been made.
In order to improve control of public procurement, Institute Alternative, supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, started the implementation of the project “Civil society and citizens against corruption in public procurement.” The project will last 12 months, while the activities will aim at strengthening cooperation between non-state actors in joint efforts in identifying irregularities in public procurement as well as formulating recommendations for improvement.
Jovana Marović
Research Coordinator
Regional Conference on EU Integration
President of the IA’s Managing Board, Stevo Muk, participated in the Regional Convention on European integration organized by the European Movement in Montenegro. The Convention was held in Miločer, from 12-14 December 2014. The focus of the Convention was the relation between Civil Society Organizations and State Actors in the process of European Integration.
Stevo talked about the experiences of Institute Alternative in the process of negotiations through the participating in Working Groups as well in Coalition of NGOs for monitoring the accession negotiations with the EU under Chapter 23 – Judiciary and Fundamental rights. Additionally, his presentation covered the topics on mandate and activities of Council for cooperation of the Montenegro Government and Non Governmental Organisations, as well as the practice of including Civil Society representatives to the working teams which work on the improvement of anti-corruption legislation.
Next to Institute Alternative, speakers at the Convention were the representatives of Civil Society Organization from both the region and European Union countries. For more information about the event, visit the official website of European Movement in Montenegro.
Enhance the Professionalization of Managers: More Competence and Less Politics
Round table “Professionalization of Managerial Staff: Between State and Politics” was organized by Institute Alternative with the support of Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES).
Stevo Muk, president of the Managing Board of the IA, and Dragana Ranitović, acting director general of the Directorate for state administration and local self-government have opened the event.
They had reminded on importance of preventing direct and indirect political influence over managerial positions in state administration. This principle implies that positions such as secretary or director general in the ministry should represent the upper limit which separates professional position from political appointments.
“However, in Montenegro, managerial positions in state administration are very often exposed to direct political influence. The undated resignations affair, when, in December 2012, 148 state administration managers have put at disposal their resignations to the then prime minister-elect, is only one manifestation of this problem”, Muk said.
Milena Milošević, IA’s researcher, has presented the key findings of the policy study on professionalization of managerial staff.
She said that the main factors which impede professionalization are consisted in insufficiently elaborated procedures of appointments and dismissals, negligence of professional development needs of senior managers, inconsistent and superficial performance appraisal, intransparent remuneration policy, and imprecise provisions on political neutrality of civil servants.
“Current solutions leave a lot of discretion to the Government and to the relevant minister during the appointments of senior managers. Testing of candidates is reduced to the interview and oral conversation”, Milošević highlighted, while adding that, based on current legislation, senior managers do not need to experts or specialists in the areas they cover.
On average, they are mostly required to have an undergraduate degree in social sciences and at least three years of working experience in managerial positions or positions requiring full working independence. The wage policy also leaves little room for attainment of the most qualified cadres, what might result in less transparent remuneration of senior managers.
IA’s findings suggest that senior managers receive 200 euro more that the average civil servant or state employee. Nonetheless, their wage does not provide a whole picture of their earnings, because they receive additional income for membership in various bodies and managing boards of public companies. Hence, the average monthly income of senior managers amounts for 1,000 euro.
“Political neutrality is not adequately regulated either”, Milošević pinpointed.
Civil servants should restrain themselves from public exposure of their political attitudes. Expression of these attitudes during the working hours is considered to be a severe breach of official duty. Yet, it is not clear what exactly “restrain from public exposure of political attitudes” implies, especially in the light of the fact that at least 90 senior managers are simultaneously members of bodies of political parties currently in power.
Svetlana Vuković, director of the Human Resources Management Authority, reminded that the new Law on Civil Servants and State Employees, represents a significant step forwad, especially concerning professionalization of senior managerial staff and of heads of authorities, because this Law has set clear conditions this cadre should meet and has limited its mandate.
“Only one senior manager and one head of authority have been dismissed since the start of the implementation of the new Law on civil servants and state employees because of unsatisfactory performance” she added.
Danijela Nedeljković-Vukčević, head of the State Administration Unit within the Ministry of Interior, explained that the additional delimitation between political appointments and professional positions has ben achieved by the introduction of expert-managerial staff, which is one of the absolute novelties of the new Law, but by the introduction of state secretaries and special advisors as well.
She emphasised that, within the Ministry of Interior, they are aware about certain shortcomings in the implementation of the Law as well. These shortcomings are poor administrative and technical capacities of institutions tasked with the Law implementation, incompleteness of Central Human Resources Register, lack of strategic planning of professional trainings and problems in functioning of Ethical Committee.
Dr Dragan Đurić, core technical advisor at the United Nations Development Programme, highlighted the fact that state administration is increasingly becoming a creator of public policies.
“Who is drafting negotiating positions within the membership talks with EU -civil servants”, he added, with the remarks that such situation might lead to an accountability crisis.
All speakers have agreed that it is extremely important for the most competent people to occupy managerial positions in state administration.
Analysis: “Human resources for EU membership: policies of the Western Balkans”
The members of Think for Europe (TEN) network, Institute Alternative, European Policy Centre from Belgrade and European Policy Institute from Skopje have prepared new background document “Human resources for EU membership: Policies of Western Balkans”. The document was made for the conference “Building Human Capacities for EU Accession in the SEE Countries”, held from 13-16 October 2014 in Cavtat, supported by GIZ ORF (Open Regional Fund).
The focus of the documents is the experience of the EU countries and Western Balkans in attracting and retaining staff with special “benefits” (higher salaries, faster career advancement), which were intended for officials involved in the negotiation process.
On behalf of Institute Alternative, research coordinator Jovana Marović, has participated in writing and preparing this document.
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The Paradox of an Appointment
After the last convocation of the Parliament, we urged the parliamentary majority to give the presidency of the Security and Defense Committee to the opposition. As this is the most important supervisory working body of the Parliament which should establish control over key levers of power, this solution would be natural as well as in accordance with the comparative practice. Our proposal wasn’t accepted, and now the parliamentary opposition fails to reach the agreement even about the Deputy of Committee which belongs to them.
In the previous convocation of the Parliament, Goran Danilović served as Deputy President of Security and Defense Committee, until his resignation in 2009. Danilović resigned because he was not allowed to access the classified information of the National Security Agency, although he should have been allowed, being a Committee member.
For the last five years, this Committee did not have a Deputy President. Who knows for how much long it would be the case, if recently adopted Law on basic principles of intelligence and security sector does not stipulate that the Deputy President is the member of the Bureau for Operational Coordination of the Work of Security Services. This solution is adopted on the basis of the proposal of MPs from Positive Montenegro Party, whose initiative was aiming to establish better oversight. It was adopted in the Parliament without a single “against” vote, although this kind of solution doesn’t have firm ground in regard to the principle of the separation of powers.
Snežana Jonica was appointed as the Deputy President, who is the MP and the Vice-President of Socialist National Party (SNP), one of the opposition parties in the Parliament. She was appointed by the votes of board of Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), Positive Montenegro Party and Bosniak Party. Jonica didn’t get the support from only one member of DPS, Obrad Mišo Stanišić, who explained his decision saying that he would never support any candidate from the opposition, as long as the candidate doesn’t enjoy the joint support of the entire opposition group.
Members of the Committee of the Democratic Front (DF) left the session after their candidate hasn’t been supported by the majority, with the promise of “leaving the board until further notice”. This was followed by public accusations against Pajović, Jonica and SNP. Although the reaction seems understandable, the result is that the DF, as few times before, is giving up its parliamentary powers, better said, its duties and obligations to institutionally control the government.
Numerous objections could be raised in relation to this case.
Firstly, the right to propose in this case was self-attributed by a Committee member of Positive party, who became a member of the Committee in July 2013 and rarely participated in board meetings. It would be more natural that Velizar Kaluđerović attended the Committee meeting, who is senior Jonica’s colleague and the senior member of the Committee (since November 2012). If Kaluđerović thought that he was not the one who should be the candidate for this position on behalf of SNP, he might have suggested Jonica. That would at least formalize the impression that the SNP, and not DPS and Positive party, is standing behind her appointment.
Secondly, any proposal for a public office function should be done promptly and publicly. On the contrary, the proposal to appoint Jonica was given on the day of the meeting with the sentence explanation. Therefore, the impression that remains is that this appointment has been previously agreed upon between Jonica, Pajović and DPS. That is not contrary to regulations, but it undermines the legitimacy of the opposition representative.
Thirdly, MP Jonica, who was appointed as a member of the Committee less than a year ago (December 23rd 2013), had less “rights” to the position of Deputy President in this Board. Also, she still hasn’t filed a formal initiative to hold control and consultative hearing, nor control visits to institutions.
Fourthly, the fact that one MP from DPS, Obrad Mišo Stanišić, who is known as someone who often contributes to the opposition cause of action, does not want to participate in this scenario of appointment, talks itself about the type of scenario.
Last, but not the least important – for some reason, the SNP did not want to give the arguments for its attitude in the inter-opposition debate held about the division of the seats among them. The debate about the best proportion of participation of opposition parties in the distribution of seats in the Parliament could be focused and taken in favor of the SNP. Let’s not forget that member of DF serves as the Vice-President of the Assembly and President of the two committees – Committee for European Integration and Anti-corruption Committee, as well as the Commission for Monitoring and Control of the Privatization Procedure, while the SNP has the Presidency of the Committee on Economics, Finance and Budget.
To summarize, something is rotten in the idea that the party who forms a majority in the Government elects the representatives of the opposition. It would be rotten anywhere, but especially in this Committee, which controls the security and defense sector, and in a country where the main battle between government and the opposition is, allegedly, on whether or not there is actual political will to deal with corruption and organized crime.
Unfortunately, this decision brought by the majority and, partly, the minority of the opposition members of the Committee, has achieved the goal of further marginalization of the opposition in the Committee.
However, there is some justice in what happened to Medojević, who had the intention of become the deputy of Mevludin Nuhodžić, member of the Presidency of the DPS. Medojević intended to become a member of the Bureau for Operational Coordination of the Work of Security Services, together with the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister for Political System, Foreign and Interior Policy, Minister of Justice, Minister of the Interior, Minister of Defense, Minister of Finance, Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration and Director of the National Security Agency.
In other words, Medojević intended to sit at the same table with Milo Đukanovic and Duško Marković, just to mention two of them, while he was repeatedly claimed that they are at top of the pyramid of organized crime, that they are the Chief and Deputy Chief of the mafia in Montenegro. Medojević has intended to coordinate security services with them, while arguing that aforementioned security services are branches of the mafia and should be abolished.
On the posed question – how would that work – the conflict between conventional and non-conventional opposition strategies, i.e. multitasking both the constructive role “fellow member of the Bureau” and the role of the leader of protest fighting to dismiss the mafia regime, ie. other fellow members of the Bureau – unfortunately, we will not get an empirical answer.
For the audience less familiar with the context and atmosphere in the Bureau, it is worth mentioning that during the last few years the opposition members have been taking care of harmonious relations, good atmosphere and understanding, more than they articulated their differences strongly, using all the control mechanisms.
The impression is that they did not see many anomalies and deficiencies in its own prudential supervision of security and defense sector, numerous delays, a low level of Committee activity and poor results. Opposition members have failed to fully utilize mechanisms that gave the right to opposition to seek and obtain more of the Committee.
Instead of achieving fair agreement among opposition parties about their own participation in the exercise of parliamentary functions, we got a new evidence of mistrust among the opposition and public mistrust in political parties and Parliament.
We will advocate that the Law on the Parliament stipulates clear procedures in order to avoid a case similar to this, when the issue has not yet been solved by Code of Ethics.
Stevo Muk
President of the Managing Board
text has been originally published in the ,,Forum” section of the daily Vijesti