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Elections – Birthplace of Corruption and Ongoing Political Crisis

Having in mind that environment in which elections take place is far wider and longer process than the electoral campaign or election day only,  European Commission should provide its own assessment and not rely on OSCE ODIHR mission report only.

Ana Đurnić, public policy researcher at Institute alternative participated in the panel “Frontrunner in a slow race? Montenegro’s EU integration path” organised by the Centre for Monitoring and Research (CeMI) in cooperation with the European Policy Centre in Brussels, on 8 May 2019.

“Fair and democratic elections are influenced by number of long lasting governance failures including among many others, monopolies and corruption in public procurement, political party employment in public sector, misuse of discretionary powers in distribution of budgetary funds, social benefits, loans to individuals and companies”, she added.

She reminded that the Government did not do anything to improve public procurement system, although the European Commission noted backsliding in this area last year.

She highlighted the need for further extension of basic/key recruitment and promotion rules prescribed in Law on Cicil Servants and State Employees (LCSSE) to wider public sector ( health sector, education sector, public enterprises and public institutions), in order to prevent political employment. “Posts for employment in public sector which fall outside of scope of LCSEE have been opened for a one day only, thus not allowing for minimum of transparency and competition”, Đurnić aded.

“The Government’s Commission, whose work is completely non-transparent, discretionary decides on the allocation of funds from the current budgetary reserve”, Đurnić said and reminded that the total sum of the current budgetary reserve spent in the period 2011-2017 amounts to €107,13 million.

She pointed out that there is no political accountability in Montenegro and that, on the contrary, key actors of well-known electoral frauds affairs have been promoted both in the public service and in the party. “Ex director of the Railway Directorate, key actor of the “Ramada” Affair and member of the Social-democrats, became Senior Advisor I at the Finance and Accounting Department of the Ministry of Transport and Maritime Affairs in the Government of Montenegro, while the former mayor of the Capital City Podgorica and key actor of the “Envelope” Affair is now Secretary General of the President of Montenegro”, she aded.

“Besides, the Government is actively working on shrinking space for civil society activism”, said Đurnić and reminded of the amendments to the Law on Free Access to Information from May 2017, which introduced a tax and business secret as a basis for restricting access to information.

“These amendments led to obtaining data from the Tax Administration and Ministry of Finance to become “mission impossible”, aded Đurnić.

“The most recent attempt to amend the Law on Data Secrecy, whose idea was to declare every information related to “functioning of the organ” secret is currently “on pause”, thanks to the strong reaction of the NGOs, but we do not know whether the Government will come back to that”, she said and aded that this was yet another Government’s attempt to facilitate the implementation of the authorities’ absolute high-handedness in deciding what the public has right to know.

“That is why the ongoing “Envelope” Affair, no matter how important, is only the top of the iceberg”, concluded Đurnić and added that this case showed how superficially Montenegrin institutions perform their role of preventing and prosecuting electoral frauds and corruption.

The panel “Frontrunner in a slow race? Montenegro’s EU integration path” organised Centre for Monitoring and Research (CeMI) in cooperation with the European Policy Centre (EPC) in Brussels, within the project “Raising CeMI’s Policy Expertise and Policy Impact on the National and International Level”, financed by Open Society Foundations – Think Tank Fund. The panel was also attended by Thomas Hagleitner, Head of the Montenegro Unit at the European Commission, Nikoleta Đukanović, Executive director of CEMI and Bojan Šarkić, Ambassador of Montenegro to the European Union.

 

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Europe Day: Movie night at Institute Alternative

On the occasion of May 9th, Europe Day, the Institute Alternative organised a movie night for students at premises of the Institute Alternative.

Students had the opportunity to watch two documentaries:

• Europe: From WWII To Today’s European Union (2014) – Documentary shows the period from the World War II, the chronically ordered events of the creation of today’s European Union, as well as the way the EU and its institutions function.

• Europe Through the Generations (Council of the EU) – Movie inspired from the book by Victoria Martina de la Torre: “Europe: A leap into the unknown”. The movie shows the emergence of the EU from the perspective of descendants of those personalities who made the greatest contribution to the formation of the EU. Featuring: daughter of Alcide De Gasperi, former Prime Minister of Italy, daughter of Paul-Henri Spaak, former Prime Minister of Belgium, and former private secretary of Robert Schuman and chief of the John Monnet’s Cabinet.

After the projections, a discussion about movies was held. About 20 participants had chance to exchange impressions about the movies, as well to discuss on today’s Europe.

On the occasion of Europe Day, Institute Alternative posted several polls on the social media networks with the questions related to the EU. Followers on Facebook and Instagram could test their knowledge on the EU. More than 60 followers participated in the polls.

Institute Alternative Team

 

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Ten municipalities plan to hire over 450 employees

Human resources plans of ten municipalities show that they need to hire 457 people in this and next year. However, the estimated needs for hiring are not sufficiently explained nor their effect on the implementation of the Public Administration Optimisation Plan.

Only four local self-governments have made human resources plans within the legal deadline, by the end of January (Tivat, Plužine, Danilovgrad, Golubovci) and by the end of March it was done by six more municipalities: Podgorica, Nikšić, Andrijevica, Mojkovac, Budva and Herceg Novi.

The Law on Local Self-Government, which came into force in 2018, obliged the municipalities to annually adopt the human resources plans for local government bodies and their professional and special services. Human resources plan for 2019, as well as the projections for 2020, should have been adopted within 30 days from the day of adoption of the municipal budget, ie for most of municipalities by the end of January.

Three municipalities (Kolašin, Cetinje and Plav) responded that they had not adopted Budget Decisions for this year by the end of 2018, which was the key reason for failing to adopt the human resources plan. Other municipalities responded in March that the preparation of a Human Resources Plan is in progress (Rožaje, Berane, Bar), or simply that the human resources plan is still not adopted, mainly because the reorganization of jobs is in progress in these municipalities.

By citing the reasons for the non-existence of these documents due to the ongoing reorganisation municipalities showed the lack of understanding of the essence of human resource planning and violated Law. It should primarily be a process aimed at ensuring the proper organization of work and ensuring that the appropriate number of people with the right skills respond to the short-term and long-term goals of the functioning of services at the local level.

Furthermore, municipalities, that have adopted Human Resources Plans, applied a formalistic approach in implementing Law, without elaborating the needs for hiring. Additionally, there is no provided detailed information on the current situation, and there is the uncertainty of the data presented in plan.

For example, the municipality of Tivat says that there will be hiring of 60 employees in 2019 and 2002 (39 contracts for an indefinite period of time and 21 for a fixed term), if there is a need for them, which implies that the human resources plan is not based on needs assessment.

Regarding the needs for hiring there are some municipalities that especially stand out: the municipality of Podgorica needs 100 new employees, Herceg Novi 92, Tivat 79 and Budva 77.

Capitals’ Human Resources Plan shows the need for hiring 100 employees in the current and next year, while on the other hand plan is to reduce the number of 14 employees in the Secretariat for Local Self-Government after concluding an agreement with Golubovci and Tuzi municipalities. Other municipalities did not mentioned in their HR Plans whether the number of employees will be reduced in the next two years, except for information regarding the number of civil servants and employees who will fulfill the conditions for retirement, in total 17 of them in 10 municipalities. Also, a number of necessary officers relate to the appointment of managers who are currently in the positions of acting officers.

Human Resource Planning and Optimisation Plan

The Government has recently published a Report on the Implementation of Public Administration Optimisation Plan. The plan was adopted in July last year with the aim of reducing the number of employees at the local level for 609 by 2020. In the preparation phase of the Plan, we have pointed out that the top-down optimisation process based on indicators that do not meet individual needs and plans, has little chance of success. The government, however, has retained the approach that the plan applies equally to everything, allowing for certain ad hoc exceptions.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the Report on the implementation of Public Administration Optimisation Plan does not include a review of the dynamics of human resources planning at the local level nor of the data collected within the development of personnel plans for this year. According to the Report, the number of employees at the local level in the period from September 1 to December 31, 2018 decreased by 291, but these data are mainly based on municipal responses to questionnaires, thus are largely disputable.

From the presentation of the information contained in the local Human Resources Plans, there is a possibility that the effects of the reduction, even if it occurred, will be shaken by new hiring. Therefore, with the aim of long-term optimisation of public administration, more attention should be paid to harmonising the implementation of the Optimisation Plan and the new legal obligations regarding human resources planning.

Monitoring of this process by the IA so far shows that the only sustainable way to optimise is a more serious analysis of the Rulebook on Internal Organisation and Systematisation of all administrative bodies in order to eliminate those jobs for which there is no real need. Otherwise, even if a certain number of employees stop working in the public administration, judging by the experience so far, they will be replaced by others, as their work places remain vacant.

IA Team

Institute Alternative will continue to monitor human resources planning and human resources management both at central and local level within the project ‘’FAR – Evidence for Better Administrative Reform’’, with the support of the European Union through Sector Budget Support Instrument. The aim of the project is to contribute to the establishment of a more transparent, efficient and service-oriented public administration in Montenegro, with the specific objective of strengthening the monitoring role of civil society in the implementation of the Public Administration Reform Strategy 2016 – 2020 in key areas.

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Positive effects of optimisation?

In the lastest report on implementation of the Public Sector Optimisation Plan, Ministry of Public Administration, striving to come up with positive effects of the Optimisation Plan, claims that there has been an impact on public spending. It uses the share of gross salaries in the public sector in the GDP structure, concluding that “a conservative approach to further employment growth on this basis at the central level” is evident.

However, if we use a far more precise indicator and look at the share of gross salaries in the state budget, we can conclude that it has been steadily growing each year (2016 – 442 million; 2017 – 445 million; 2018 – 459.8 million; plan for 2019 – 472 million euros).

During 2018, initially planned funds for gross salaries have been increased for 22.8 million by amending the budget. In other words, during the first year of the implementation of the Optimisation Plan, planned amount for gross salaries at the central level had been increased over the year for more than 5%.

Furthermore, the enacted budget for 2019 has introduced an increase of gross salaries by 10 million euros in comparison to the amended sum in 2018 (472 mil. in 2019 in comparison to the 461 mil. after the rebalance in 2018).

Although we do not have final year-end budget report for 2018, if we look into GDDS Reports of the Government that are submitted to the IMF, we can see that 495.8 million euros were spent for gross salaries at the national level. A closer look at the monthly dynamics of spending reveals that in the second half of the year, when the implementation of the Plan started, 5 million euros more were spent than in the first half of the year.