Although Montenegro handled the COVID-19 crisis effectively in the early beginnings, having in mind that the first measures were introduced even before the first case was registered, as the time went by, systemic flaws were revealed. The fact that two different governments were in power during the COVID-19 crisis in Montenegro, reflected on the extent of oppressiveness of the introduced measures and resulted in different approaches. Citizens highly supported severe measures during the first wave of the pandemic, but support for the measures declined as the time went by. Selective information sharing, unclear communication of measures, violation of human rights and breaching of the Constitution contributed to the negative public attitudes towards the relevant authorities. Lack of institutional proactivity in oversight of Government’s decision-making was obvious with regards to the Parliament, the Constitutional Court and the Agency for Personal Data Protection, who failed to protect the rights of the citizens of Montenegro. When it comes to the procurement of vaccines, protective equipment and COVID-19 tests, at first Montenegro mainly relied on donations from other countries and organisations. Later the purchases of these means were conducted through non-transparent and partly unsuccessful procurement procedures. However, the cooperation with WHO and EU was on a high level, demonstrated through joint activities and projects carried out throughout the pandemic.
More details in the analysis of the response of Montenegro to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Wednesday, April 12, the first in a series of BSC Leaders Meetings was held in Podgorica, under the title “Montenegro after the presidential elections: Fast forward towards the EU?”, organised by the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy and the Institute Alternative.
Jakov Milatović, President-elect of Montenegro, Dritan Abazović, Prime Minister of Montenegro, Rosa Balfour, director of Carnegie Europe, Milena Muk, researcher at the Institute Alternative, dr Srđan Cvijić, president of the International Advisory Committee of the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy and Igor Bandović, director of the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy, took part in the public panel discussion.
Igor Bandović, who opened the BSC Leaders Meetings event, expressed in the opening remarks his great pleasure to organise the first event of this kind in Podgorica. “The Belgrade Security Conference aims to be a window to the world for the entire region of the Western Balkans and a promoter of positive changes in the Balkans. Relying on the experience of our partners from Munich, we decided to organise Leaders Meetings events throughout the countries of the Western Balkans and thus initiate the creation of a new political culture, a new style of debates and new content to promote.”
The main topics of the panel discussion, organised in the aftermath of the presidential elections, were the possible scenarios of Montenegro’s accession to the European Union, the main obstacles and opportunities, as well as the EU’s political capacity to receive new members and Montenegro’s ability to reform.
On that occasion, the newly elected President of Montenegro, Jakov Milatović, said that the new generation of politicians is a symbol of changes in the country and that the main priorities of Montenegro should be the fight against state capture and economic stability. “Regional economic integration is the basis of European integration. The success of one Western Balkan country is the success of all six of them,” Milatović pointed out.
At the first BSC Leaders Meetings event, the Prime Minister of Montenegro, Dritan Abazović, said that for Montenegro, there is no other choice but EU integration. “By joining the EU, Montenegro will fulfil its national interests, which is the reason why it will remain committed to the process of European integration.” Referring to the war in Ukraine, Abazović said: “Considering the size, population and capacities of Montenegro, support for Ukraine is more than significant, and citizens of Ukraine feel safe in Montenegro.”
Rosa Balfour, director of Carnegie Europe, pointed out that the enlargement process has become more complex. “The importance of the rule of law, civil society and political leaders who send strong messages at home are considered crucial to the process of European integration.”
On behalf of the Institute Alternative, Milena Muk stated that the previous Montenegrin governments did not meet high expectations and did not achieve sufficient progress in reforms. “Montenegro currently does not have a single institution at full capacity, but in the so-called acting condition. Responding to Srđan Cvijić’s question about the main priorities of the future government, Milena Muk highlighted the reforms and the fulfillment of temporary criteria within Chapter 23. – “I think it is positive that the European Union has become more clear and more direct in conditioning key reforms in the country, and it should persist in that approach. We see that individual islands of integrity are being created, primarily in the Special State Prosecutor’s Office, and it is up to us to demand multiplying of these islands.”
The BSC Leaders Meetings events, with the distinguished panel of international and domestic speakers, are planned to continue in the coming months in other capitals of the Western Balkans.
Institute alternative Belgrade Centre for Security Policy
We appeal to the Parliament and the Government of Montenegro to cease the practice of debating bills, which do not meet the elementary criteria of public participation, especially in the current context of the crisis of the legitimacy of the political system. Furthermore, we appeal to the Constitutional Court to promptly decide on a series of acts that caused the current crisis.
The Constitutional Court should make decisions upon the initiatives to review the constitutionality of the amendments to the Law on the President, as well as a series of related acts.
After the decree on the dissolution of the Parliament, its members have already voted for problematic changes to the Law on Local Self-Government, which the Institute Alternative previously warned would degrade the employment system at the local level, and also limit the jurisdiction of local election commissions.
Eight bills have been submitted to the parliamentary procedure since the decree on the dissolution of the Parliament was passed. Six of them were initiated by MPs without adequate assessment of the financial and other impact of the regulations, alongside inadequate public participation. Some of these proposals regulate significant areas with a potentially large fiscal impact, all without an estimated amount of necessary financial resources. Amendments to the Law on pension and disability insurance are, in this sense, particularly singled out, as in accompanying justification it is only stated that it is “necessary to allocate additional funds based on the assessment of competent institutions the number of potential beneficiaries”.
On the other hand, on April 3rd, the Government determined the amendments to the Law on civil procedure, without previously conducting a public discussion and regulatory impact analysis, and submitted them to the Parliament. In the following explanation, which was also submitted, the absence of a public discussion was justified by the small scale of amendments to the aforementioned law, which, as they claimed, aims to harmonise with the provisions of the draft of the Law on amendments to the law on confiscation of assets gained from criminal activity.
Also, the draft of the Law on amendments to the law on confiscation of assets gained from criminal activity was passed without public discussion, which is an additional problem that points to a widespread accountability crisis and the degradation of citizen participation in the decision-making process.
The legal framework did not regulate the jurisdiction of the Parliament after its dissolution, while the President of Montenegro did not sign a series of legal solutions voted on in the meantime. Therefore, in the context of vague legal provisions, the role of the Constitutional Court is even more important and the proactivity of the judges of this court is necessary in order to stop the further “domino effect” of irresponsible political decisions.
On Wednesday, March 29th, Institute Alternative organised the second meeting within the project ‘Procurement Under Spotlight – Making Watchdogs Work!’, supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Serbia and Montenegro, through the MATRA support programme.
Considering that during the first Network meeting, the issue of splitting procurement contracts to avoid open and transparent procedures was recognised by all relevant institutions and non-institutional actors, Institute Alternative prepared a detailed analysis of this problem for the second meeting.
The aim of the second meeting was to present the working version of IA’s analysis on the use of direct agreements in simplified procurement procedures, so that representatives of relevant institutional and non-institutional actors important for monitoring public procurement procedures could familiarise themselves with the findings, and for participants to exchange opinions and provide suggestions on the way towards the final version of the analysis.
The meeting was attended by 24 representatives of Montenegrin institutions, such as the Ministry of Finance, the Administration for Inspection Affairs, the High State Prosecutor’s Office in Podgorica, the Commission for the Protection of Rights in Public Procurement Procedures, the Montenegrin Employers’ Union, the Special Police Department, the Chamber of Commerce of Montenegro, the Agency for Prevention of Corruption, as well as representatives of the media and non-governmental organisations.
In addition to discussing the specific findings of the analysis, the meeting also addressed inspection findings related to the irregularities noted in the analysis, as well as other irregularities in public procurement procedures. The published analysis ‘Direct Procurement Under Spotlight’ incorporated suggestions from the meeting participants.”
This meeting was produced within the Project “Procurement under spotlight – Making Watchdogs Work!”, with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Serbia and Montenegro within the MATRA Rule of Law program. Project aims to empower and motivate watchdogs to combat corruption and undue influence in public procurement.
The Parliament of Montenegro, the Constitutional Court and the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data did not act proactively to oversight the decision-making of the Government of Montenegro during the coronavirus epidemic and failed to protect the rights of Montenegrin citizens.
This was stated during the panel discussion “Crisis Management – Lessons Learned from COVID-19”, organised by the Institute Alternative.
While presenting the Draft Analysis “Montenegro’s Response to COVID-19”, Dragana Jaćimović, Public Policy Researcher at Institute Alternative, said that Montenegro effectively managed the COVID-19 crisis in the early stages, and that systemic flaws were revealed over time.
She reminded that the key role in the management of the epidemic was initially played by the National Coordination Body, or NCB, while after the change of government, towards the end of 2020, that role was taken over by the Council for fighting Coronavirus.
Dragana Jaćimović
“The fact that two different governments were in power during the COVID-19 crisis in Montenegro, reflected on the extent of the oppressiveness of the introduced measures and resulted in different approaches. “In the first wave of the pandemic, the citizens highly supported severe measures, but the support for the measures decreased over time,” Jaćimović said.
She assessed that the selective exchange of information, unclear communication of measures, violation of human rights and violation of the Constitution contributed to the negative attitude of the public towards the competent bodies.
“The lack of institutional proactivity in the oversight of the Government’s decision-making was evident when it came to the Parliament, the Constitutional Court and the Agency for Personal Data Protection, which failed to protect the rights of the citizens of Montenegro,” Jaćimović warned.
She pointed to the Government’s decision to publish a list of persons who were ordered mandatory isolation due to being abroad as a negative practice in terms of respect for human rights. “In the end, we also had court proceedings, where the state had to pay compensation to the citizens due to the publication of this data,” Jaćimović added.
Speaking about the negative practices regarding the management of the epidemic, in the part concerning the suppression of the spread of fake news and disinformation, Jaćimović said that in the first two months of the outbreak of the epidemic, Montenegro initiated five criminal proceedings for causing panic and disorder due to posts on social media networks.
“According to official data, Montenegro had 70 ventilators at the beginning of the pandemic. By April 2020, health institutions were additionally equipped, after which they had 151 ventilators at their disposal. The battle for ventilators that took place on the global market did not bypass Montenegro either, so Montenegro made urgent procurement without a defined delivery date and we also had a situation where a part of the purchased respirators was not functional,” Jaćimović said.
She pointed out that at the beginning of the epidemic, there was a shortage of protective masks, not only for citizens but also for medical personnel.
“The lack of protective equipment was not the only problem, but also the number of medical personnel was insufficient. According to the data of the Union of Doctors of Medicine, at that time there were 42 epidemiologists for the whole of Montenegro, and a very small number of people performed complete PCR diagnostics,” Jaćimović said.
Since there is no unified information on the total number of donated vaccines, based on the official announcements of the Government, which IA used as a source, about 660 000 doses of vaccines were donated to Montenegro.
“When it comes to the procurement of vaccines, protective equipment and tests for COVID-19, in the beginning, Montenegro mainly relied on donations from other countries and organisations. Later, the procurement of these funds was carried out through non-transparent and partially unsuccessful public procurement procedures,” Jaćimović said.
She added that Montenegro had very good cooperation with the World Health Organisation, as well as the European Union, which was demonstrated through joint activities and projects that were carried out throughout the pandemic.
Srđan Pavićević
The President of the Committee for Health, Labour and Social Welfare, Srđan Pavićević reminded that ten days after the formation of the executive power in December 2020, the first session of the Committee was held, at which the consultative hearing of the Minister of Health at that time, Jelena Borovinić Bojović, was held. Later on, two more sessions of the Committee dedicated to the coronavirus were held.
“I think that the Committee did a professional and fair job. I think that our monitoring of the situation was permanent, obvious and transparent,” Pavićević said.
He believes that, according to the capacities at his disposal, the Montenegrin medical system responded correctly to the first challenges when the coronavirus appeared.
“We have encountered everything that the world has encountered, including many developed countries and medical systems. We were faced with a lack of strategy, staff and consumables. “We supplied respirators very quickly,” Pavićević said.
He believes that it was a paradoxical situation that during the coronavirus epidemic, there were patients infected with the coronavirus in the Clinical Center, while the regular program was implemented for the patients in other hospitals. “I believe that there was enough space to do it differently, to ensure that contaminated zones and infected patients are distributed among hospitals and that the Clinical Center of Montenegro should have remained a basic, umbrella institution that guarantees a continuous life, for people who are infected with covid”, Pavićević said.
Mina Brajović
The head of the office of the World Health Organisation in Montenegro, Mina Brajović, indicated that immediately before the pandemic, at the end of 2018, the global body for monitoring preparedness at the world level, which was established by the World Health Organisation, made an assessment of preparedness capacities and concluded that no country in the world is ready in terms of response to the pandemic.
“As for Montenegro, in 2019, in cooperation with the Institute for Public Health, the Ministry of Health and all other sectors, we supported an extensive evaluation of national capacities for prevention, preparedness, readiness, response and recovery. That report showed that the level of capacity according to various criteria was at a modest level and that it was an alarm before the crisis; that it is necessary to invest and undertake urgent interventions to strengthen the capacities for health security”, Brajović said.
She said that the World Bank Report on the double shock indicated that the fiscal space at the global level for strengthening public health capacities for preparedness is drastically and alarmingly reduced.
“As a world, we are in a serious problem, because we did not learn the lesson from the pandemic, the largest in the history of the United Nations system, that it is necessary to invest in health security, because by investing in health and health security, we invest in the economy and international security,” Brajović said.
She claimed that currently, the data on the coronavirus at a global level, in the region and Montenegro is promising and encouraging.
“We from the World Health Organisation estimate that this year should be the year in which we put an end to the pandemic,” Brajović said.
“With surgical precision, COVID-19 pointed the finger and showed the weak points and links of the system in terms of preparedness and response to crises in Montenegro and around the world,” Brajović stated.
During the discussion, the Program Director of CAZAS, Sanja Šišović pointed out that the consequences of COVID are being forgotten.
“The research we did showed that the Clinical Center, which is the lifeblood of the health system, stopped outpatient examinations. We did a quick questionnaire among patients, which showed that 60% of them never got a new appointment, especially not promptly. And when it comes to mental health, I think it is a crisis that is knocking on all doors,” Šišović said.
Doctor Đorđije Krnjević, who is the Head of the Internal Medicine Clinic in the Clinical Center of Montenegro, said that many things could have been done better during the coronavirus epidemic if there had been “more hearing”.
“Unfortunately, we were in a position where turbulent social changes were taking place in Montenegro, an unstable political system where everyone was trying to use cheap tricks, through the health system, to add another voice and position themselves on the political scene. It cost us a lot,” Krnjević said.
He pointed to three problems that the Clinical Center of Montenegro is faced with – lack of spatial capacity, shortage of high and intermediate medical staff and anesthesiologists.
Social Democrats’ MP Boris Mugoša said that the coronavirus crisis showed the vulnerabilities of the health system, stating that we should now focus on areas in the health system that can be improved.
The panel discussion was organised as part of the regional project “Enabling Just Change in the International Health Care Governance COVID -19 Pandemic and Lessons Learned from the Western Balkans“, which is financially supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
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Igor Bandović, who opened the BSC Leaders Meetings event, expressed in the opening remarks his great pleasure to organise the first event of this kind in Podgorica. “The Belgrade Security Conference aims to be a window to the world for the entire region of the Western Balkans and a promoter of positive changes in the Balkans. Relying on the experience of our partners from Munich, we decided to organise Leaders Meetings events throughout the countries of the Western Balkans and thus initiate the creation of a new political culture, a new style of debates and new content to promote.”
