Political corruption is a matter of a serious concern in Montenegro, affecting public trust in fairness of the election process and public institutions. Many cases were revealed during last year, but the real breakthrough happened when recordings from meetings of the leading political party were published, where top officials discussed election strategies based on use of public funds for party purposes.
Following presidential elections, political crisis occured and the opposition accused the governing party for election fraud. An international election monitoring mission stated that elections were professional and efficient, but at the same time expressed concerns over possible misuse of public funds for election purposes. The European Union strongly demanded proper investigations and improvement of the existing legal framework. Concrete results are still lacking and the governing party is denying involvement in the political corruption.
This paper analysis the main problem areas and describes various types of reported misuses, while trying to understand possible mechanisms of legal election funding, especially through employment in the public sector and various one-time payments to voters, from the public budget. It describes possible irregularities in the electoral register that might affect election outcomes and presents shortcomings of the legal framework which regulates financing of political parties and electoral register. In this paper MANS analysed political, criminal and administrative investigation and the process of development of new legislation. On the basis of all the information and analyses of laws in other countries, in the last part of this policy paper MANS proposes specific recommendations for improvements.
