MANS today invited all political parties who tend to perform authority in the capital city to show a willingness and to commit themselves that the new authority in Podgorica will represent a shift from all that is represented by former Mayor Miomir Mugosa.
Hiding the key information, and documents which should be publicly available by their nature, along with numerous scandals marked previous Mugosa’s reign who by any means tried to restrict access to information to the civil sector and media , which would increase transparency of the capital city, and which is more important they would indicate on the possible corruption and abuse of the office power.
Following last local elections held in Podgorica, MANS especially analyzed spending of public funds and their misuse in order to promote DPS and influence on voters in Podgorica. In this regard, it is particularly followed the work of the Secretariat of Finance from which is requested the greater part of the information about how the money was spent right before the local elections.
Beside numerous infrastructure projects that the capital city realized alone or in collaboration with some of the state bodies, and whose completion was “timed” to fit the local election, hiding information on how the funds are spent from the budget of Podgorica additionally opened the space for doubt that the taxpayers’ money illegally was spent before the local election.
In fact, in the study on how the state institution spend their budgets before the elections, in order to register possible deviations from the common payments from the treasury, MANS from the Secretariat of Finance in Podgorica requested so-called analytic cards which contain information when and in which way the money was spent. In addition to the date of the payments and the amounts, analytic card contains information about to whom money was paid and on what basis.
However, on the documents submitted to MANS based on a demand for free access to information, Secretariat in Podgorica hid information about “the purpose of the payment”, by which in fact disabled the possibility to determine the purposes the money was spent for.
The above mentioned example speaks for itself about the lack of transparency in work of the official bodies in Podgorica when it comes to application of the Law of free access to information, whose main goal is exactly to ensure publicity of state and local bodies, since citizens have a right to know how their money is spent.
Beside the Secretariat of Finance in the unfounded banning of information access or complete ignorance of the demand leads and the Cabinet of Mayor of Podgorica, as well as the Center for Social Work, who refused to submit data on payrolls and lists of employees, and one-time payments of social benefits.
In addition to the election issues, Miomir Mugosa is one of the DPS officials who most drastically violated the Law on Free Access to Information, and the same recipe of banning access to information obligated and his subordinates, so until today it is the secret the majority of municipal works, housing awards, employment, the amounts of wages, salaries and so on.
All of this impose need for a revision not only Mugosa’s early decisions, but the new city government should significantly improve the transparency of local authority and public institutions who hide information how citizens’ money is spent, who is awarded housing, whether the employment is conducted based on the law or based on a party, how social welfare is distributed.
Therefore, the obligation of the new city government must be revision of Mugosa’s deals made far away from the public eye and publication of all relevant data on the operation of the capital city, which are guaranteed to the citizens’ by a serious of laws of this country. Businesses such as the one with “Carine” or the newest one that relates to the land of the Aluminium Plant must be diligent subject of the new city government in order to never repeat businesses made away from the public eye, as the matrix that Mugosa introduced as a rule in the work of the city administration.
MANS
