As the upcoming elections are approaching, DPS more aggressively abusing personal tragedy of individuals in order to disavow Law on financing political parties in which they have strong support by the President of the Economy, Finance, and Budget, Aleksandar Damjanovic.
Campaign of disavowing the law that should prevent electoral manipulations started going Mayor of Podgorica, Miomir Mugosa, using a family tragedy and misleading the public that is unable to families of workers killed on the electrical pole pay pecuniary assistance because of the Law on financing political parties.
This kind of morbid campaign goes on and on, and now the authorities of the municipality Kolasin claim that they can not to their severely ill citizen pay monetary assistance needed for emergency surgery, because they are allegedly prevented by the mentioned Law.
In both cases the Law is brutally manipulated as contrary to interpretation of the officials of the DPS, in the law is clearly stated that the one-time social benefits could be paid and during the elections to the extent which can not exceed a maximum of 5% compared with the previous 12 months. This confirms in both cases that the financial aid could be paid, but the politicians of the DPS rather use someone else’s misfortune to further disavow the law that limits their previous practice of social air abuse.
These are some of the most brutal examples of very filthy DPS’s campaign against the Law on financing political parties and manipulations with that law, which actively joined by his negligence Aleksandar Damjanovic as the President of the Committee on Economics, Finance and Budget, the body that is particularly relevant for the monitoring of the mentioned law.
Damjanovic has so far organized meetings of the Committee which in most cases considered meaningless requirements of Montenegrin institutions for the interpretation of the law, all clearly initiated in order to create a public image that legislation is enacted to stop life in Montenegro, but not DPS in its vote buying.
What was Damjanovic’s key commitment, which to this day he did not do, is to analyze a huge amount of documentation on the spending of public funds right before the elections that the Parliament received, to request from the Government additional information which would point on a violation of the law, to organize thematic sessions and to examine responsible representatives of the Government to determine how the social aid is distributed during the election period, is that the way for vote buying, and why money is not given to those who really need it.
Also, Damjanovic’s obligation was to determine the way in which are used the agricultural loans and other grants, distributed in the election period to a much greater extent than in the years of elections, who is employed in the state institutions right before the elections and in which way, as all other violations of the Law on financing political parties.
Since the adoption of the new Law on financing political parties, Damjanovic has not found any abuse or violation of the law, nor he was held accountable, politically or criminally.
Therefore it is not surprising the fact that during the adoption of the Law on financing political parties, the members of the Parliament from the DPS supported Damjanovic’s amendment which granted him to deal with parliamentary oversight over the implementation of that law, because in the DPS obviously were sure that as long as Damjanovic takes care about that business, not even one of their officials would not be liable for violations of the Law on financing political parties and the misuse of public funds for his party.
Regardless of whether Damjanovic’s motives to disavow the Law on financing political parties are personal political interests and “deals” that he has with DPS’s members of the Parliament, or anger due to the fact that he is not on the list of candidates of the party that he officially belongs fot the upcoming local elections, we warn him that his behavior causes great harm to all Montenegrin citizens, whose key interest is to stop with electoral manipulations by the party in power and to finally restore confidence in the electoral process.
Vuk Maras
Director of Monitoring Program
