Posted on

Blog: Independent Police, Yes or No?

Question on Police independence is in its purpose the question where will be the power, in ministerial or director chair, and that power must be properly decentralised and brought in balance. It is bad for citizens if this process is not used for serious improvement of the Police work but only comes down to spillover of the personal power.

The new Law on Internal Affairs has been in the work for three years, as much as I am member of the workgroup that prepares new law. The debate on which model is better -independent Police or Police as integrated body of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, lasts at least that much.

This is very complex question because we already had both models in practice and both showed certain advantages and weaknesses. It is easy picking whichever solution but it is hard making it functional and in the citizens service.

The Ministry of Public Administration (MPA) in November 2017 made Analysis of functional and financial effects of the introduction of the „administration body integrated in the ministry“. MPA publicly started advocating the stance that this model is not appropriate, that it did not contribute to greater responsibility and efficiency and that it generally should be abolished. Earlier State Audit Institution proposed consideration of that idea based on its revisions.

It is not about the Police Administration but about twenty different administrations, bureaux, agencies and directions integrated in the ministry. Proposal of the MPA to abolish concept would be carried out in practice in a way that some of those bodies would become independent, some of them would be completely incorporated in ministry, and it is possible to come to fusion of the bodies.

The Ministry of Finance has gladly accepted that bodies in its composition, Tax Administration, Customs Administration, Real Estate Administration, Games of Chance Administration, change its status. On the other side, the Ministry of Internal Affairs stated on a public debate of the new Law on State Administration that Police should be an exception because of the specific nature of the police powers and necessity of the stronger control.

Except the proposal to abolish concept, the MPA did not give additional guidelines on new concept about how to get something of the new quality, apart from a bunche of new independent bodies. And that means there will undoubtedly be problems lately with efficiency and responsibility.

However, analysing the practice we had from 2012 till today, we noticed that the MIA had many challenges „managing“ Police.

Two key aspects of the model „integrated body“ are that the MIA until now had under control: Police employment and financial management of Police. For those needs, from 2012 till today, in the MIA number of directorates, directions, departments, services, bureaux, sectors and other organisational units have been formed and theirs effect have not been seen, while their real contribution on the functioning of Police is very questionable.

For example, the MIA has changed nine times Rulebook on Internal Organisation and Systematisation for a year and a half. This shows lack of a vision for Police reform but also chaotic human resource management policy that  contributes to Police politisation. In one moment during this year there were 320 unassigned civil servants of the MIA and Police.

The MIA lost more than 17 million euros on judicial, mostly labour, proceedings from 2012 to 2014. This best reflects how human resource management is done. And that trend continued. The SAI report published on July 2018, shows that over six million euros have been paid in 2017 based on judicial proceedings from earlier period.

However, neither Police was better at managing finances while it was independent. Exactly during that period most problematic contracts were concluded and carried out: Limenka, camp Zlatica, Police Administration building. These contracts had multimillion implications on budget, for which no one have been accountable.

And while Police tend to „jump out“ of their jurisdiction and acts arbitrarily, Ministry did not step on a way to that in quality manner. Internal control of the MIA work only on benign complaints instead of criminal consequences of certain police servants.

Although it is very simple to confirm that Ministry dictated certain political solutions when it comes to strategic police documents, legislation, employment of personnel not suitable for the needs of Police – it is the fact that the management of Police did not defend themselves from those practices. That lack of integrity will be challenge in the upcoming period. Although Police model as independent body has certain advantages, they will be effective when Police get entirely professional management that will be tough obstacle for political influence on her work.

Appointment of the new Police Director has definitely sped up making decision on a model. But operationalisation of that decision is very complex and demands stipulation of precise internal procedures. The question is will there be interest for creating good system for human resource management and finances, and system that will make abuses and political decisions harder instead of the expert ones. Otherwise Police will be managed same as the MIA.

Dina Bajramspahić,
Public Policy Researcher

Posted on

The Ministry of Interior in Montenegro Trains Personnel with No Prospects for Employment

By continuing to select candidates for the “police crash-course” the state administration invests in personnel that are not needed and for whom there is no information as to how and when will be employed, due to the fact that several cohorts of cadets still await employment in Police.

During 10 and 11 September, a health check-up was conducted for 270 candidates who had previously met criteria to attend the Ministry of Interior’s training for work in the Police, out of whom 60 will be selected for the course. In addition to this, the Police Academy takes in generations of cadets whose education costs amount to 15.000 EUR per person.

The above mentioned three-months long training of the Ministry of Interior goes against all Government’s decisions and has begun a year ago (19 September 2017) by announcing a public call for the potential trainees.

At that time, think-tank from Montenegro Institute Alternative pointed to the fact that this call goes against all strategic documents and guidelines that the Government adopted on the Ministry of Interior’s initiative. Specifically, Government’s documents (Police Directorate Development Strategy, Action Plan for its implementation and the Analysis of the Status, Reception, Promotion, Education and Training of Police Officers) all point to the surplus of employees in Police, as well as to the lack of need to offer employment to those whose education is lower than the Police Academy.

These documents stipulate that there is a need to change the legislation and prescribe that having received education from the Police Academy is the lowest qualification for employment, which is an acceptable level of education for the Ministry of Interior.

Since the announcement of the call and up until September 2018, the applicants have been waiting for the selection procedure to resume. To add insult to the injury, in the meantime the Government’s decision to forbid employment based both on fixed- and long-term contracts in all organizational units of state administration and public institutions until 1 July 2019 entered into force, as per the Plan for Optimization of State Administration.

As an exception to these rules from the Optimization Plan, 31 cadets of the VIII generation have already been employed in the Police after a special Information from the Ministry of Interior had been sent to the Government in July this year, without a public call. In the same month, the next generation XII of the Police Academy also commenced its training. This means that during the next two years there will be four generations of almost 200 cadets ready to be employed in the Ministry of Interior based on automatism and without public calls, in line with the new clauses from the Draft Law on Internal Affairs.

However, these new legislative solutions proposed by the Ministry of Interior did not only envisage automatic employment for cadets but they also forbid the employment of persons who have received education lower than the Police Academy. Due to everything aforementioned, it remains unclear why the Police trains cadres that will not have the opportunity to use the knowledge they received because they will not fulfill the criteria to be employed by the police.

Finally, with the announced changes to the Law on Pension and Disability Insurance of Montenegro, the beneficiary work experience of police officers will no longer exist. This means that the natural “outflow” of personnel will slow down and that in a multiannual perspective there will not be as many vacancies as there will be trained personnel.

The Institute Alternative invite the Ministry of Interior to take their own strategic documents more seriously and to implement policies that could help the Police to function more effectively and have the best personnel, which is something that will not be achieved by having “crash-courses.”

Dina Bajramspahic,
Public Policy Researcher

Posted on

Commentary on the Secretary of the National Security Council

Small responsibilities, good salary

Although the constant rotations of a small number of personnel in security sector is very negative practice that lasts for years and have detrimental effects on security situation, I think that the public in this concrete case gives too much of importance to responsibilities of the secretary of the National Security Council and that needs to be explained.

Namely, by the Law on Basic Principles of Intelligence and Security Sector of Montenegro, Secretary is not even member of the National Security Council chaired by the Prime Minister of Montenegro, but only a member of the Bureau. It would be appropriately to say that it is just a expert and technical work position.

Secretary is located in the Cabinet of the Prime Minister and works on „preparation of sessions of the National Security Council in accordance with Rules of Procedure of the Council; carries out professional analysis of the material and prepares for President of the Council appropriate opinions of submitted material; prepares minutes from the sessions of the Council; works on executing conclusions of the Council; works on keeping and using material; performs other tasks upon the order of the President of the Council“. These expert and administrative tasks, under the same law, is also carried out by the Secretariat-General of the Government.

Accountability for functioning of the Council primarily has Prime Minister . For functioning of the Bureau for Operational Coordination of the Intelligence and Security Sector is accountable Interior Minister. Thus,  the gravity of the political accountability for the state in security sector stays upon them and executives of the authorities within this sector.

However, in accordance with the Law on Wages of Public Sector Employees this position has better coefficient than the director of Police Administration and significantly less accountability. Secretary has coefficient 19,02 while director has 16,43, but also director has the right on increase of wage on more basis. In practice, it is approximately same wage.

For example, Veselin Veljović as a Secretary of the Council has been paid 1385,89 euros for his work, according to the list of calculated earnings of public official which can be found on website of the Secretariat-General. His first payment upon entering on duties as director in  Police was 1300 euros. Slavko Stojanović, in accordance with asset declaration, as a Police Director had 1.466,75 monthly wage through 2017.

Veljović had wage of 695 euros as a Secretary of the Council till February 2016. In order to the changed law , Secretary of the National Security Council was especially acknowledged, and from March of that year wage was doubled, firstly on 1131 and then on 1580 euros. It does not seem that this change of the legislation is based on the description of duties of secretary which is the same since the establishment of the Council and Bureau, but on personal decision. Lastly, Council and Bureau have around three sessions a year on average.

Dina Bajrampsahić,
Public Policy Researcher

Posted on

The Government ignores communication with NGOs

Coalition Cooperation to the Goal, which consists of 100 NGOs, has sent a letter to the Prime Minister more than a month ago with the call upon the Ministry of Finance and the Government of Montenegro to fulfil their legal obligations and to adopt the Regulation on co-financing of EU projects for domestic non-governmental organisations. After more than a month, the Coalition did not receive any feedback, which confirms the negative attitude of the Government towards the NGO, which is culminating in the current year. Apart from not fulfilling legal obligations with regard to NGOs and making it difficult for a large number of organisations to perform their work, the Government, by ignoring completely the requests and letters, also openly shows the intolerance towards the non-governmental sector.

The draft of this Regulation was a subject of a public discussion even in July 2017, and after more than a year it is clear that there is not even one reason, except for obvious political reason, that its adoption is being postponed thus much.

All projects supported in calls for NGOs by the EU in Montenegro, and for which co-financing is required, relate to resolving key issues in the field of the rule of law and human rights in Montenegro, which are, at least declarative, the Government’s priorities. If this was the case, the Government would timely adopt the Regulation on co-financing and allow unhindered implementation of NGO projects. Obviously, the rule of law and human rights for the Government are a priority only if the public administration is dealing with them. Avoiding the adoption of the Regulation directly points out to an attempt to exclude any other actor, and in particular NGOs, that deal with these issues.

The European Commission has also clearly declared itself in favour of significance of reforms in these areas in the latest Report for Montenegro, which unambiguously expressed expectations for concrete results in the rule of law and protection of human rights.

Given that these are EU projects, the Coalition Cooperation to the Goal has informed the Delegation of the European Union to Montenegro about this problem by expressing, on this occasion as well, a clear expectation for the Government to adopt the aforementioned Regulation in an urgent procedure. Otherwise, we will not have a dilemma that this is yet another manner of endangering the work and activities of NGOs in the country.

The Coalition of NGOs Cooperation to the Goal currently gathers 100 non-governmental organisations from all over Montenegro and represents the largest organised NGO coalition in Montenegro.

Ana Novaković, President of the Management Board

Posted on

The Government’s Proposal for the Appointment of Veljović is Illegal

From the documents submitted along the proposal for the appointment of Veselin Veljović as a Director of the Police Directorate it follows that legally required testing procedures had not been conducted. We urge the Government to annul the public competition.

 

On July 25th, the Human Resources Management Authority established a list of candidates who fulfilled the requirements of the public competition opened on July 2nd, 2018, a day after the new Law on Civil Servants and State Employees entered into force.

The new Law recognizes heads of authorities as a special category of civil servants, and prescribes written testing procedure and interviewing of candidates, as well as evaluation in accordance with the prescribed criteria.

However, the text of the public competition for the position of the Director of the Police Directorate was published in accordance with the Law that had ceased to apply.

Namely, in the public competition, the Human Resources Management Authority in one part refers to the provisions of the Law on Civil Servants and State Employees (“Official Gazette of Montenegro”, No. 39/11, 66/12, 34/14 and 16/16), although application of the new law had commenced (“Official Gazette of Montenegro”, No. 002/18 of 10.01.2018).

Interview with Veselin Veljović, the only candidate for the position of the Director of the Police Directorate, was conducted in accordance with the procedures of the Law on Civil Servants and State Employees which had ceased to apply. The old law only stipulated the obligation for the Human Resources Management Authority to submit a list of candidates fulfilling competition requirements to the line Minister, who, on the basis of a conversation with all the candidates from the list, proposes appointment to the Government.

Thus, the Law whose application is prescribed to commence on July 1st this year was not applied to this public competition.

The deadline for the Government to adopt all bylaws for the implementation of this law was July 1st, and we hold that delays in legislative activity may not be the cause of illegal procedures. On the contrary, we appeal to the Government to annul the competition for the position of the Director of the Police Directorate, before it leads to illegal outcome, and to publish a new competition in accordance with the current law.

Stevo Muk

President of the Managing Board of the Institute Alternative

Posted on

Gaps in Reporting on Reforms in the Area of Rule of Law

Even though the reforms in the area of rule of law started 20 years ago, the period of dynamic legislative and institutional changes has begun with preparations for opening negotiation chapters 23 and 24 in 2012. The adoption of the Action Plans for these two chapters in the following year, the contents of which was clearly and precisely guided by the recommendations contained in the screening reports, in the most comprehensive manner combines reform in a number of areas, like judicial reform, repression and preventive anti-corruption, all human rights, migration, asylum, border protection, the fight against organized crime, etc.

Five years later, the question of “cumbersomeness” of the approach to reforms appears as one of the possible obstacles to better managed reforms which go into the core of problems in the given areas. The complexity of the areas, a large number of planned measures, the involvement of numerous institutions, related policy documents that are being implemented simultaneously, etc, have led to several parallel reporting processes. None of these reporting processes fully satisfied the criteria of good monitoring and evaluation, which are a prerequisite for quality management of reforms.

The goal of this analysis is to point out to the gaps and omissions in reporting that make monitoring difficult and hamper the efforts towards reform processes attaining full impacts and expected effects. In addition, the analysis tends to provide an incentive for a shift in reporting from rigorously formalized (at the level of activities - “realized/ unrealized”) towards reporting focused on the impact and results.