MANS with anticipation and special joy awaits filing of criminal charge announced by Montenegro Airlines against our organization, as the possible legal action can help us to obtain evidence and other possible election abuses in that company.
It is evident that such an initiative of this state-owned company has only one goal – to turn public attention away from the abuses of employment processes for electoral purposes which Montenegro Airlines tried to perform right before the upcoming local elections.
In fact, the President of Montenegro even in February announced that the date for local elections would be May 25th of this year, and that the elections would be launched two months before the deadline. Therefore one of the key actors in the scandal “Snapshot”, Daliborka Pejovic, the President of Montenegro Airlines, tried to manipulate the prohibition of employment during the election period in a way that she just two days before the formal announcement of the elections launched advertisements for 12 jobs in that company.
However, it appears that Montenegro Airlines was guided by the provisions of the old Law on financing political parties which due to its deficiencies only prohibited employment of people for whose job positions the ads were launched during the election period, and actually allowed manipulations that Montenegro Airlines tried to perform. However, with the new Law, which was amended at the initiative of MANS, this norm is specified, and all stages of employment process are prohibited, including advertising of the available job, and signing any kind of contract for an indefinite period, and for the performance of seasonal jobs in tourism.
Therefore, with the day of the announcement of elections these job advertisements of Montenegro Airlines should no longer be publicly available, nor any person can be employed on that basis. For that reason we invite Montenegro Airlines to annul disputed job advertisements, as if they based on them employ some individuals, they double violate the law, and they would be responsible for misdemeanors, for illegal advertising and the illegal employment, and all contracts that they sign will be legally null and void.
However, the whole turmoil witnessed by people during previous days, which was created by the Government of Montenegro with help of its Ministries, the Employment Agency, and Montenegro Airlines represents unprecedented case of contradiction and self-contradiction, which in the end proved that in the lie “legs are short”, and that the illegal job advertising and hiring of people right before the elections can not be covered up.
In fact, MANS first announced the filing of charges against a number of institutions for illegal advertising 71 jobs during the election campaign. On the same day, the Government together with the Employment Agency denied us, claiming that there is no job advertisements. Then we showed the evidence that these advertisements existed on the website of the Employment Agency at the time when we filed the charges, but they were deleted later. After that, the Government and the Employment Agency denied themselves by claiming that the advertisements are still on the Internet, but it is very hard to find them.
In this way, the ruling party has shown that it will continue with vote buying and on this elections, and the Director of the Employment Agency, Vukica Jelic confirmed that she is guided by the same principles as her husband, former director of the Employment Agency, Zoran Jelic, a famous actor in the scandal “Snapshot” who promoted the formula “one job position for four votes”.
MANS will continue to closely monitor employment by this party, as well as other types of misuses of state funds for electoral purposes, and we believe that the public and international pressure as well, will reduce the space for electoral manipulations.
Finally, we invite the Government, state entities and companies to stop to violate the Law on financing political parties, to cancel all illegally advertised jobs, and to ensure that, in the future, the Law is implemented in the prescribed way.
Vuk Maras
Director of Monitoring Program
