Institute Alternative appeals on MPs of Parliament of Montenegro to amend the Law on Parliamentary Inquiry as soon as possible. Refusing to support these amendments means refusal of the support to the strenghtening of the Parliament’s control function, because it is certain that the recently former inquiry committee cannot perform the task asigned to it unless its comepetences are more closely defined by the law. Inquiry comittee for collecting facts and information about the corruption in the privatization of Telekom of Montenegro will face obstacles in collecting information because of the imprecisely defined competences, the lack of access to classified information and the absence of legal provision which would oblige state officials to be interrogated in front of the Committee and sanction them in the case of disobedience to the calls for interrogation or in the case of giving a false testimony.
The aforementioned issues should be regulated by the law as soon as possible so the current parliamentary inquiry will give results, and the inquiry committee could proceed with its work smoothly. The changes of the Law on classified information are also needed so that the members of the inquiry committee will be granted the access to classified information.
It is worrying that the inquiry committee has so far held only one, constitutive session, on March 9, especially when bearing in mind that it received a difficult mandate to perform its task by October 1. Given that this is the first parliamentary inquiry in the last ten years, members of the inquiry committee should demonstrate additional responsibility and give contribution to the parliamentary inquiry becoming a powerful oversight instrument over the work of Government, state bodies institutions, and a control mechanism to be employed more often.
As we have already highlighted in our analysis “Parliamentary inquiry in Montenegro – Control mechanism without political support”, the special Law on parliamentary inquiry is needed to regulate in more details the scope of competences of the inquiry committee, its formation, organization and functioning, budget, conducting of inquiry, reporting to the Parliament. Consequently, this control mechanism would be strengthened.
Dina Bajramspahić
Public Policy Reseracher
