Month: November 2020

NGOs Human Rights Action (HRA), Center for Civil Liberties (CEGAS), European Association for Law and Finance (EALF), Institute Alternative (IA), Institute for the Rule of Law (IVP) and the Network for Affirmation of the NGO Sector (MANS) welcome the decision of the Constitutional Court of Friday, 6 November 2020, to schedule the election for the president of the Constitutional Court, after more than nine months, and authorise the oldest judge, Hamdija Šarkinović, to carry out preparatory activities for the election.

This decision annulled the previous decision of the Constitutional Court of 27 January 2020 by which judge Desanka Lopičić was appointed “presiding judge” of the Constitutional Court until the election of the new President of the Constitutional Court and was authorised to organise and conduct elections for the new President of the Court by the end of the year.

On 5 February 2020, our six non-governmental organisations called for the disputed decision on the election of the presiding judge to be revoked, because the majority of four judges of the Court, contrary to the Constitution of Montenegro and the Law on the Constitutional Court, established the function of a “presiding judge” and even appointed judge Desanka Lopičić, who had previously already held the office of the Court president, although the Montenegrin Constitution explicitly prohibits the same person from twice holding the office of the President.

We then called for the oldest judge, Hamdija Šarkinović, to call a session to elect the President of the Court in accordance with the Constitution, the Law and the Rules of Procedure of the Constitutional Court, and pointed out that most judges arbitrarily prescribed that “the conduct of the presidential election will be organised by the end of December 2020 at the latest”, because there had been no reason not to repeat the election process immediately.

However, the Constitutional Court did not respond to our letter nor did it change its position until Friday. In the meantime, the European Commission announced in its latest report on Montenegro that “the Constitutional Court elected its former President as a ‘presiding judge’ in the interim, even though such a category is not provided for by the legal framework” and concluded that “the procedure for appointing the new Constitutional Court president needs to be conducted without further delay”.

It remains unclear why most of the judges of the Court behaved unconstitutionally and illegally for more than nine months. Doubt remains that the goal of creating the function of a “presiding judge” was actually political, so that Judge Desanka Lopičić would remain in that position in the election year, no matter what.

We remind that in the Decision on the election of Desanka Lopičić as the “presiding judge” the majority of judges stated that the law does not prescribe that the oldest judge is to take over the presidency of the court, and then ten months later they decided differently. This speaks in favour of the conclusion that the decision on the Lopičić’s appointment was completely arbitrary.

The Constitutional Court must no longer allow itself to be degraded by such decisions, which undermine public confidence and seriously jeopardise the state’s ability to ensure the rule of law. We expect that the president of the Constitutional Court who meets the legal requirements will be elected as soon as possible, as well as that the new majority in the Assembly will administer due care when electing two new judges of the Constitutional Court and ensure that they be persons not affiliated with political parties.

Our Dina Bajramspahić, public policy researcher, was a guest in the show dedicated to European topics. The show was broadcasted on 6.11.2020. at Radio of Montenegro.

Among the other things, she answered the following questions:

• Is the proposed model of expert Government a good, sustainable and expected solution?
• Will European integrations be overshadowed if it is seen that the Government has a lot of work to do – in the first place maintenance of the economy due to the pandemic?
• What should be the first move of the new Government when it comes to the negotiations with the European Union (EU)?
• Would it be a more functional and useful to re-form the department for European Affairs, since we have the European Integration Office for now?
• Does the EU have time to deal with the admission of new members, in addition to the accelerated pandemic of virus?
• How can the outcome of the elections in the United States affect our region? How much will the Western Balkan be the focus of the new administration?

Answers on current topics and ongoings in Montenegro, the European Union, but also the world, listen here:

After 19 months, the Administrative Court scheduled hearing in the dispute that we initiated against Agency for Prevention of Corruption for hiding the Decision in which it determined that DPS was illegally financed in the 2016 pre-election campaign. The Decision, the secrecy of which the Court is now deciding, has been publicly available for almost 11 months.

On October 27, the Administrative Court sent us a summons to the hearing in dispute on our lawsuit. We filed lawsuit to the Court on March 22, 2019. We remind that this is a well-known affair “Envelope”. Also, Agency for Prevention of Corruption kept its Decision, in which it determined that DPS was illegally financed in the 2016 pre-election campaign, secret for more than nine months.

Since we requested mentioned Decision of the Agency for Prevention of Corruption through free access to information, and the Agency denied us access to the document, we addressed  the Administrative Court. Agency denied us access to the Decision, reasoning that document is “INTERNAL” because the procedure regarding the same matter is being conducted before the Special State Prosecutor’s Office.

However, we witness that the Agency published the disputed Decision on its own before the Administrative Court decided on our lawsuit. The Agency published the Decision on fining DPS on December 3, 2019, and we received a summons to the hearing almost a year later.

This is not the first lawsuit we have waited so long for to come before the judges of the Administrative Court, nor the only one that has waited for the situation in dispute to be resolved “by itself”.

This is just another case that we can add to the list of arguments that the promises about the duration of administrative disputes from the Public Administration Reform Strategy are just a wish list.