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
