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Talks and agreements

Stevo MukIt seems that the parliamentary dialogue process is heading in a good direction. Such conclusion is to be made considering the series of events: the meeting of political leaders, opposition parties meetings, the confirmation of SNP (Socialist People’s Party) to participate in the dialogue and participation in the interim government of the authority and opposition, as well as the participation of the government and the opposition upon the agreement on manner of forming local communities. As the Government has made its offers more precise, the opposition parties have further specified their demands. What is particularly important now is that the parliamentary dialogue followed by an agreement do not become simple “deal” on participation of opposition in the Government, but to include other important pillars of election process control.

The agreement must also include the analysis of the implementation of action plans of the State Audit Institution and the Ministry of Interior when it comes to the implementation of the electoral legislation – particularly when it comes to obligations on establishing a functional voters’ list and the implementation of the electronic identification of voters. The expected local elections in Tivat will show to what extent the competent institutions are ready for the organisation of the process at the parliamentary elections.

When it comes to the people that will represent the opposition in political positions, the opposition must finally take the responsibility and stop having second thoughts and look for its replacement in the civil sector and other places. The responsibility for success or failure of this unique mission cannot be taken over by anyone else. The members of current Government belonging to ruling parties and the opposition responsible for the organisation of these elections will be formed at this very moment and probably never again, which carries a historical risk of the legitimisation of the process, not only for this election cycle but for the future as well.

When it comes to opposition ministers in the government, the opposition and the members of current Government belonging to ruling parties must further agree upon a few extra rules, so that their participation does not limit the implementation of adopted public policies, or to lead to the daily confrontation within the government, or to a competition in use and misuse of state resources and ministerial authority.

A certain number of positions in public institutions which the opposition parties are requesting, without question belongs to the circle of political appointments – the government appoints and dismisses persons on those positions, therefore as such cannot be disputed. However, when it comes to positions that are according to Law subjected to public announcements and competition processes, it is crucial to preserve their independence. I say this by knowing, which Institute alternative has been continuously pointing out, just how deeply these positions are poisoned in terms of political parties. However, I believe that the law and a determined objective, professionalization and depolitisation of the senior civil servants which includes assistants to ministers (now called general directors of directorates) must be preserved.

As an alternative, in order to achieve the goals of electorate trust, the possibility could be found in the institute of the state secretary. Namely, this position is de facto assistant to minister who could have all the competences of a minister and is to be appointed politically. According to the Law on state administration, the state secretary is appointed and dismissed by the Government, at minister’s proposal, without public call and its mandate ends simultaneously with the end of its minister’s mandate. Given the legal provisions mentioned above, it is transparent that this position creates room for naming the persons (from the opposition) in an elegant and legal manner in the ministries where the opposition is not represented within the concept of ministers, and thus creating a significant scope of control.

Having in mind the widespread vote-buying practice and other misuse regarding election rights, the role of prosecution, the police and other bodies in determining and prosecuting of its inevitable perpetrators (instructing parties and executors from both sides of the trade) of those criminal acts. Therefore an important part of the political agreement must be a decision that the Parliament of Montenegro requests in a written form the state prosecutor to prioritise in 2016, during local and upcoming parliamentary elections, the prosecutions against the criminal act against freedom of choice and misuse of authority, in relation to mentioned criminal acts. The Parliament of Montenegro would in accordance with such an agreement recommend that the prosecutor’s office puts on the top of their agenda the pursuit of criminal acts perpetrators, given its professional attention, internal organisation, available resources as well as communication and cooperation with the Police Directorate and other authorities in order to, therefore, determine and guarantee the timely and efficient investigation of election frauds. The Parliament of Montenegro, that is its signatories, parliamentary clubs, would commit to be regularly informed, at least once a month, on the activities of the state prosecutor’s office, police directorate and other state bodies in uncovering and prosecuting perpetrators of these acts. I have already reiterated the necessity for the Audio Recordings Affair 2016 to be placed on the top of agenda of the state prosecutor’s at the meeting of NGOs with supreme state prosecutor and heads of special, high and basic prosecutor’s offices. Earlier findings are showing traces that mostly lead towards a ‘’cave’’ so if that decision is to be made, prosecutor’s job would be simplified, if the actors in the election process decide to repeat the old practice.

Last, but not least, what is really important in the long run, I believe that the current political dialogue is an opportunity for the political parties which are currently forming the Government and the opposition to come to an agreement that the adoption of a legal framework and appointment of this particular Council of Agency for prevention of corruption, is a result of a rotten political compromise that has ruined the basis of the new Agency and its possibility to do its job in the least serious and independent manner. This is why an agreement on the necessary modification of the legal framework and personal constitution of the Council and directors of the Agency can be a long term contribution of this political process to further fight against corruption.

Stevo MUK
President of the Managing Board

Text originally published in the section ,,Forum” of Daily Vijesti

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Consultative conference ’’Civic control over police and public critic”

Public policy researcher, Dina Bajramspahić, participated in a consultative conference of the Council for the Civic control of the Police and civil society, on February 5th called ’’Civic control of the Police and public critic’’. The conference gathered representatives of 20 organizations for human rights and democratic transition.

Dina has presented Institute alternative’s research finding, regarding results of the public control of the police from report called ’’Police integrity assessment in Montenegro’’. She gave suggestions for improvement of the work baring in mind recently appointed members of the Council.

Dina pointed out that the Council has the poorest legal jurisdictions in relation to the other police control authorities and that this issue has to be changed. Because of the Council’s great enthusiasm and its willingness to do its work well, balance should be made regarding strengthening jurisdictions. She has also pointed out that there is a lack of information on the implementation of the conclusions and ratings. Therefore, it is only natural that the Parliamentary committee for security and defense is partner to the Council.

She has also criticized Council’s budget and remarked that it has been on the low level for years.

Report from the conference can be found in its entirety here (in Montenegrin only).

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School for sustainable and coherent policies

Institute Alternative continues successful implementation of Public Policy School with the support of the Commission for Allocation of Revenue from Games of Chance. We obtained funding for the fifth year in a row while our proposal received the highest number of points by the selection committee within the category “Non-Formal Education of Children and Youth”.

Montenegrin accession negotiations are moving towards a stage where national co-ordination and policy capacities need to be systematic and thorough. Public policies must not be deficient in substance, need to be consistent with one another as well as economically efficient and financially sustainable. Additionally, proper implementation and monitoring of policies need to be ensured.

However, problems in this area remain numerous starting from weak capacities of the Government to scrutinize draft policies and judge whether they meet previous commitments. Additionally, sectoral strategies are developed incoherently and often lack costing or a link to the medium-term expenditure framework, therefore putting at risk their future implementation. Moreover, ministries focus on the implementation of policies while relatively low number of civil servants works on policy analysis and development. Furthermore, there are major weaknesses in implementation of inter-ministerial and public consultations. These claims are confirmed by the European Commission in its latest progress report for Montenegro.

With the aim of addressing such shortcomings in the work of the Montenegrin public administration, we have been implementing this programme for four years. We wish to ensure that current and future actors of public policy creation and implementation process gain necessary knowledge and skills, but also to enable communication and cooperation between different sectors and institutions. We believe it is important to strengthen capacities of public administration because the system of policy creation severely impacts opportunities for development and the character of economic growth of a society.

More than 90 participants have successfully completed the programme thus far, out of which the largest number are civil servants – 37%. Additionally, we published the collection of papers entitled “Public Policies” in which five authors from the perspective of different disciplines analyze the concept and key elements of public policy. Furthermore, the School is licensed as the official programme for the acquisition of knowledge and skills in the field of public policy by the National Council for Education of Montenegro.

The call for participants of the Fifth Generation of Public Policy School will be announced in the second half of 2016.

Milica MILONJIĆ
Public Policy Researcher

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The Agency should rather pay attention to the implementation and instead to the violation of the law

Institute Alternative’s reaction to comments of Agency for prevention of corruption to our publication ‘’Happy New Agency!’’

We are taken by surprise with the attitude of the members of the Council of the Agency for prevention of Corruption stating that the Institute Alternative’s case study ‘’Happy New Agency’’ is ‘’badly argumented, unobjective and an orchestrated attack on the independent institution’’, particularly taking into account that such an estimation is not corroborated with responses concerning our analysis and facts. The Agency is therefore trying to give a negative evaluation of our organization without a single counterargument. It is true that our representatives participated in all Agency’s Council sessions that were open for public during last year, so a question arises as to what made the members of the Council be less ‘’generous’’ in 2016 by completely forbidding such mechanism of participation of interested parties that is foreseen by the Rules of Procedure.

Additionally troublesome are their instructions on obligatory use of ‘’table and graphic presentations’’ which would, according to the representatives of the Council of the Agency that have supported comments to our publication, contribute to its level of ‘’seriousness’’. Besides stating that the Institute Alternative as a scientific-research centre still had to fulfill some conditions in order to obtain its working licence, we would also like to inform the members of the Council that our publication does not have a goal of presenting the public opinion that was submitted to us as an example of a successful research. Nevertheless, as it is pointed out in the comments by the Agency for prevention of corruption, it is a matter of a methodological approach.

Finally, given that the signatories of the comments are interested in the matters of financing of the study ‘’Happy New Agency’’, we would like to inform the public that the publication is a result of a research of the Institute Alternative which was not financially supported. The mission of the civil sector is the democratisation of society, and it is not limited in a timely or financial manner. Unfortunately, this is not fully understandable to the director and the members of the Council of the Agency, given that their goal from the very beginning was to stop a objective monitoring and evaluation of the work of the Agency which has resulted in abolishing audio recording of the sessions, forbidding the presence of interested parties and an ad hoc defining of the criteria for participation in work which is not foreseen by the Rules of Procedure. Therefore, we consider that the Agency should pay due attention to the implementation of the law and bylaws, and not be persistent in attempts of their circumvention.

Remark: Clicking on the links below you can find our publication as well as the comments of the Agency

dr. Jovana MAROVIĆ

Research coordinator

Case study: Happy New Agency!

Agency’s comments to our case study

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Germia Hill Conference 2016

Milena Milošević, public policy researcher at Institute alternative, has participated at the Germia Hill Conference 2016, held on February 2nd and 3rd in Prishtina. The conference organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kosovo in conjuction with Aspen Institute Germany offered a framework to explicate a complex geopolitical landscape from a South East European perspective.

NATO continues to remain the only collective security aspiration; however, just like the rest of Europe, the countries of South East Europe all share the same concerns and are not immune from contemporary foreign policy and security challenges. Being confronted with a new armed conflict in Ukraine and an escalating war in Syria South East Europe continues to face numerous challenges in the context of Euro-Atlantic integration.

The conference brought together around 200 guests from 40 countries from variuos field of work and interest: high-level decision-makers and experts in the field of foreign and security policies, public policy researchers and media representatives who elaborated on solutions for current challenges, from the perspective of South East Europe; a region that due to its geographical position and its ongoing transition and reform processes is left particularly vulnerable to the security challenges the entire European continent is facing.

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Improve cooperation with NGOs in order to increase the quality of e-public services

Our representative Milica Milonjić participated at the meeting with the NGOs entitled “Modalities of cooperation for improvement of the eGovernment portal (eUprava) and presentation of e-services” organized by the Ministry of Information Society and Telecommunications.

Milica pinpointed the main obstacles in the area of service delivery:

  • Civil servants do not accept changes in the workflow and refuse to start using electronic system of service delivery;
  • Public authorities are not interested in setting up services at the eGovernment portal;
  • Small number of available services at the levels 3 and 4 allowing two-way communication and transaction [1];
  • Electronic document management system (eDMS) is not used in full capacity in all the ministries while in some instances its implementation is held back at the level of managerial staff [2];
  • Failure to comply with the deadline set under the Law on Electronic Government for providing the data necessary for establishment of the Unified information system for electronic data exchange among state authorities and public administration bodies;
  • Procedures for data exchange among state authorities and public administration bodies are not clearly defined, and consequently many public administration authorities collect huge amount of additional data which originally comes under jurisdiction of other authorities;
  • A significant number of registries is still kept in the manner which is not appropriate to the new technological age. Namely, the data entry is done by hand and, thus, does not support the electronic exchange and processing;
  • The price of issuing digital certificates is not cost-effective due to a small number of available services at the levels 3 and 4.

Additionally, she pointed out that service delivery in two key areas for citizens and businesses – e-Health and e-Procurement is not at the satisfactory level. Furthermore, she stated that it is necessary to provide equal conditions and opportunities for the use of e-services and the Internet for the entire population and that one way of achieving this goal is to improve digital literacy of citizens.

The opening remarks at the meeting were delivered by Mr. Stevan Ljumović, Managing Director of the Directorate for Electronic Government at the Ministry while the services available at the eGovernment portal were presented by Ms. Vesna Simonović, chief administrator of the portal.

At the meeting, it was announced that in the forthcoming period the focus will be placed on promoting the eGovernment portal, increasing the number of available e-services that will have widespread use, as well as on improving digital literacy of citizens, government officials, together with representatives of the media, NGOs, and businesses.

[1] Service at the level 3 enables two-way communication, including interactive filling of forms (e-forms) and registration with authentication (by filling out the form a specific service is initiated – e.g. document delivery to the user’s address) while service at the level 4 provides transaction, which implies complete processing of the case with online payment services, and feedback to the user.

[2] eDMS operates in full capacity in nine ministries, although production is established in all ministries. Under the Public Administration Reform Strategy 2016-2020, which is in the drafting process, it is planned for the eDMS to be implemented in all ministries by the end of 2016, after which its implementation will begin in other administrative authorities.