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There is significant scope for the fight against corruption within the Police

After unemployment, the corruption is the biggest problem that Montenegrin citizens face, and there is significant scope for the fight against that problem within the Police, as showed by the research of the regional network POINTPULSE, which is consisted of Institute alternative, Belgrade Center for Security Policy (BCSP), BIRN Serbia, Center for Security Studies from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovar Center for Security Studies.

Dina Bajramspahić, public policy researcher at IA, stated that the research „Police Integrity in Western Balkans“ has been conducted from June 11th – 22nd with 1.292 respondents, adult Montenegrin citizens.

“We asked what are the most important problems Montenegro is facing at this moment. The citizens believe corruption is, after unemployment, the biggest problem in Montenegro, ” Bajramspahić said at PR Center.

She said that the second question was related to the trust in institutions in Montenegro, clarifying that the Police is in second place, after the education system.

“This represents a relatively high level of confidence in relation to the overall context, since the total percentage is 58 percent. Citizens have expressed less confidence toward the judiciary, Market Inspection and the Directorate for Anti-Corruption Initiative”, stated Bajramspahić.

She said that, when asked about the first association to the police, citizens mostly say that those are safety and security, while the corruption is in second place.

“While answering to the question about how they see the average police officer in Montenegro, citizens have overwhelmingly responded that they see them as arrogant, insolent and brash, while the second part of citizens believe that instill the safety and security,” said Bajramspahić.
The next question, she added, was what is the capacity that police in Montenegro operates within, where 30 percent of the respondents said that they act as a service of citizens.

“Of total number of remaining respondents, 38% say that they act either in the Government’s interest or as the mean to cover and protect political parties – 19 %, or as a mean to protect people who work at the top of Police Administration”, said Bajramspahić.

She said that the majority of citizens, 70 percent of them, believe that politics has an impact on operational work of the police, completely and excessively, while the remaining 27 felt it has was less or no impact at all.

“When it comes to employment in the police, we can see that only 32 percent believe that employment is conducted in accordance with the law – through open competition”, Bajramspahić pointed out.

She said that the views of citizens on the efficiency of the police showed that percentages are extremely high when it comes to public safety, safety in schools and traffic.

“This should explain why there is such a high confidence in the police, and that citizens also have low confidence that the police will effectively fight corruption within the police force and organized and economic crime,” stated Bajramspahić.

When it comes to the prevalence of corruption in the Montenegrin institutions, she added, the police is in the fifth place.

“The most negative opinion citizens have towards Market inspection, judiciary, Customs Administration and health, while the most positive attitude they have toward NGOs, education, the media,” said Bajramspahić.

She explained that the perception of the prevalence of corruption shows that this is not a decisive factor for the views of citizens about trust.

“Almost identical number of citizens have confidence in the police and believe that corruption is widespread, on the basis of which it can be concluded that the citizens decide on the trust based on other factors, not upon the prevalence of the corruption,” Bajramspahić said.

Responding to the question of who is most corrupt in the police, the research showed, as she said, that one third of citizens believe that those are people at top positions in the police, rather than ordinary police officers, inspectors and police officers dealing with economic crime.

“When asked who were the most common forms of corruption, 35 percent of citizens responded that it was taking bribes from criminals, while 28 percent of them considered that it was accepting bribes from citizens,” said Bajramspahić.

Speaking about the bribe, she said that five percent of the respondents who admitted that they have had that kind of experience, 73 per cent of them said that they had only offered a bribe; while 19 percent think it was at the request of police officers.

“Their response was that the most frequent value of bribe was amount of ten Euros,” she said.

Marko Sošić, public policy researcher at IA, explained that the identical questions which were responded by Montenegrin citizens were posed to the citizens of Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“I have to say I was surprised with the degree of overlapping results in these countries. For most questions, the results are almost identical. The only country that stands out is Kosovo, which is characterized by an attitude towards the police which is much more positive than in other countries, “he said.

Stevo Muk, President of the Managing Board at IA, considers that there is significant scope to further work on integrity and accountability of police officers and police organizations.

“A lot of space remains for the police to fight against corruption and organized crime in general, but within their force as well. We believe that there is ample room for further work to reduce political influence on employment and the work of the police, as well as on other aspects of integrity, “he said.

The survey was conducted within the regional project „Balkan Pulse For Police Integrity and Trust – POINTPULSE”.

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Who Will be Held Accountable for Misuse of State Funds?

More than a month ago, with our four partner organisations, we have submitted an initiative to the Supreme State Prosecutor, requiring him to answer our question – What has Prosecution done with the reports that State Audit Institution (SAI) has officially submitted to the State Prosecutor’s Office?

So far, SAI has submitted audit reports to the State Prosecutor’s Office in eight cases: the Institute of Textbooks and Teaching Aids, Center for Contemporary Arts, Center for Vocational Education, Radio and Television of Montenegro (public service), University of Montenegro, Montenegrin National Theater, Democratic Party and the audit report on state guarantees.

We have received a response that in each of these cases the investigative actions have been carried out, but most of them were dismissed and no charges were brought.

In five out of eight cases, the Prosecution decided that there are no grounds for initiating criminal procedure. In three cases, the investigation is ongoing – the report on state guarantees, the Institute of Textbooks and Teaching Aids and Democratic Party from Municipality of Ulcinj.

This response confirms our doubts – the Prosecution’s work when it comes to determining accountability for inappropriate and illegal management of public funds is slow and inefficient.

It indicates that there are some problems in the cooperation between the Prosecution and SAI and some undefined procedures, but also that the Prosecution isn’t familiar enough with the nature of work of the state audit. The State Prosecutor’s Office is wasting time in the investigation requiring additional documentation not from the audited entities themselves, but from the SAI.

We will continue to follow these cases and put pressure on competent authorities to determine accountability for abuses and misuses of the taxpayers’ money.

 

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Perceptions of citizens on police integrity – Presentation of results of a regional public opinion survey

Regional network of civil society organisations POINTPULSE organises the presentation of results from the public opinion survey „Police Integrity in the Western Balkans” that will take place on Wednesday, 22 July 2015 at the PR Center in Podgorica starting at 11.00 h.

At the presentation citizens’ perceptions on the following issues will be discussed:

  • What is the level of citizens’ trust in the police?
  • How corrupt are the police?
  • What is the role of the Internal Affairs Sector?
  • To what extent politics influences police work?
  • What are the priorities in the police reform process?

At the presentation the perceptions of Montenegrin citizens on the police accountability will be discussed, as well as the comparative perceptions in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo.

Panellists:

  • Stevo Muk, president of the Managing board of Institute Alternative,
  • Dina Bajramspahić, researcher at the Institute Alternative,
  • Marko Sošić, researcher at the Institute Alternative.

Working language of the presentation is Montenegrin. Simultaneous translation to English will be provided.

Due to a limited number of available seats, please confirm your attendance by Tuesday, 21 July 2015, via email at info@institut-alternativa.orgor via phone at 020/268-686.

Three separate presentations will be organised on the same day by the regional project partners in Sarajevo, Belgrade and Pristina – Centre for Security Studies BiH, Belgrade Centre for Security Policy, Kosovar Centre for Security Studies.

This presentation is organised within the framework of the “Western Balkans Pulse for Police Integrity and Trust – POINTPULSE” project supported by the European Union through Civil Society Facility programme (EuropeAid/136-034/C/ACT/Multi).

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Imprecise provisions of the Law encourage corruption

Imprecise formulations and the possibility of broad interpretation of the provisions of the Law on Public Procurement restrict the possibility of appeal and proving abuses, it was concluded at the yesterday’s panel discussion „How to fight against corruption in public procurement?“, held in Municipality of Bar.

As one of the provisions of the Law on Public Procurement which is subject to wide interpretation and manipulation, the panelists recognized the article (85) which refers to the „abnormally low price“. Namely, if the price of the most advantageous tender is at least 30% lower than the average offered price of all substantially responsive tenders, the contracting authority, according to this article, is obligated to request an explanation from the bidder. It stipulates, further, a framework for writing an explanation, but, in practice, those often unrealistic explanations are leaving the space for corruption. Also, the bidders’ opinion is that the abnormally low price is defined by the Law in a way that allows precise mathematical calculations, enabling incorrect, „setup“ tenders to remain within legal framework.

The participants of the pannel disussion have recognised the problem of an inprecise definitions of the terms in the Law, and cited as an example the term of „equivalence”, which, according to the Law, implies that the product or service has the same or better technical characteristics listed in the specification of the object of procurement. The bidders think that this term, as many others in the Law, could be a subject to wide interpretation and that it creates a problem in the procurement process, regardless of the likely improvement of definitions made with the recent amendments to the Law.

When it comes to the use of direct agreement, the contracting authorities have expressed the dilemma with respect of which year the allowed percentage should be calculated. The findings of the Institute alternative (IA) also show that there is a different practice of the contracting authorities when calculating the percentage of the use of direct agreement. Specifically, by examining the individual annual reports on public procurement of the contracting authorities for 2014, we noticed that, in most cases, they have counted the percentage of use of direct agreement in respect of completed annual budget for public procurement during that year. However, in several cases the contracting authorities have counted this percentage in respect of the completed budget for public procurement for 2013, which partly corresponds to the provisions of the Law, but sometimes even in respect to the planned budget for public procurement for 2014. Different interpretations of this provision are also problematic regarding the aspect of keeping record on the contracting authorities which have violated the percentage of use of direct agreement on an annual basis, so it should be more precisely defined by the Law.

Aside from the fact that there is no misdemeanor or criminal accountability for violating the legal provisions, , the latest amendments to the Law on Public Procurement enable corruption which remain in the legal framework, was concluded at the panel.

Panel discussion “How to fight against corruption in public procurement?” was organised within the project Civil Society and Citizens against Corruption in Public procurement, which is implemented by the Institute alternative with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands. The project activities are aimed at strengthening cooperation between state and non-state actors in recognising irregularities in public procurement procedures and formulation of recommendations for improvement.

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International conference on public policy in Milan

Representatives of TEN Network, which is composed of Institute Alternative (IA), European Policy Centre (CEP) and European Policy Institute (EPI) have presented the joint paper on successful comparative practices in the linkage of the performance audit and evaluation of public policy at the International conference on public policy in Milan (ICPP 2015). The moderator of the panel was professor Marleen Brans from the Catholic University in Leuven. The presentation of the results is the part of the project “Performance Audit and Policy Evaluation: On the same or parallel tracks?“, supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) within the the Regional Research Promotion Programme (RRPP) in Western Balkans.

The paper includes the overview of the situation in the areas of performance audit and evaluation of public policy in Montenegro, Serbia and Macedonia, as well as the overview of the experiences in three European Union countries (Great Britain, The Netherlands and Estonia) in linking these two processes.

International conference on public policy was held at the Catholic University Sacro Cuore from July 1st-4th and it was attended by numerous academics, researchers and decision makers from all around the world. The representatives of TEN network were Jovana Marović (IA), Simonida Kačarska (EPI) and Miloš Đinđić (CEP).

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Press Release: Assessments of the success for Chapter 23 are arbitrary

Semi-annual report on realization of the Action plan for the Chapter 23 abounds with imprecise information, while the assessment of the fulfillment of the measures itself is problematic and leaves a lot of space for arbitrary reporting and the manipulation with the achieved results.

The high degree of implementation of the measures, 77% in the Action Plan for Chapter 23 in 2015 is the result of inadequate reporting forms and descriptive assessment of the measures. Namely, in the report on the implementation of this plan, which was adopted yesterday by the Government, most of the measures are identified as “partially realized”, or it is refer to them as if they are being realized continuously. In total, 68 of the 99 outstanding measures and sub-measures for the implementation of the part in the report related to the fight against corruption are defined in this manner. We believe that this way of reporting reinforces the impression that implementation of activities has been carried out, which is not correct for a certain number of these measures.

In that manner, state authorities have assessed the measures of providing space and technical conditions for the work of the Special Prosecutor’s Office as partially realized, although it is said that the provision of these conditions is currently being realized, without any explanation at which stage the activities are taking place. Also, for a number of measures it is constantly repeated that are being realized continuously, although there were not any trainings conducted or round tables organized in the reporting period.

We can legitimately ask the question whether the measures are being implemented if we are not able to get an insight into the prepared material, as it is the case with the by-laws for the implementation of the Law on Prevention of Corruption. Additionally, in some cases it is emphasized that the implementers do not have the data defined as the success indicators for certain measures. For example, Department of Internal Control of the Police does not own the information about the number of indictments in relation to the number of criminal charges, which is controversial because of the manner of definition of impact indicators.

The example of imprecise and inaccurate reporting is also the measure related to the establishment of transparent procedures on public procurement. Since the indicator for this measure is the number of established services for public procurement in local governments, it is incorrect that they have been established in all local governments as it was pointed out in the report, because one Public procurement officer is not a substitute for the whole service, which is presented as equal in the report.

We believe that it is necessary to eliminate controversial qualifications of the degree up to which the measure has been implemented. Also, calculations on the percentage of the success of implementation of measures are unnecessary because they were based on superficial evaluation. For the measures reported that are being realizing continuously, it is necessary to establish precise quotas for the realization on the semi-annual level. Even with all these proposals, the public should be informed proactively and more frequently about the effects of the fulfillment of the measures.

Jovana MAROVIĆ
Research Coordinator