Judgment by the Court in Pljevlja which decided that the actors of brutal vote buying are sentenced to a suspended sentence shows that the judiciary is under the control of one political party and and that by its (in) activity directly stimulates electoral corruption.
Such the massage is very concerning and its sends a clear massage that state institutions are not able to provide adequate institutional response to the scandal “Snapshot”. The fact that such a judgment was passed right before the publication of the Progress Report of the European Commission, along with other obvious problems in the prosecution of corruption and organized crime, but also and application of election laws, will certainly negatively effect Montenegro’s process in European integration.
Therefore, we invite the public prosecution to show at least a minimum responsibility and independence in a way that will appeal to a higher instances on such judgment.
This especially due to the fact that the prosecution already showed that lacks competence and courage to qualify misuse of public money for campaign purposes as a criminal offense “violation of voting determination”, in order to relativize electoral fraud. In fact, in this case we are not talking about an ordinary corruption, where state officials illegally appropriated government money, but about organized vote buying for the ruling party.
This judgment showed that even in the cases where is such a great pressure from the public and the European Union, a huge number of evidence collected by MANS, as well as witnesses who confirmed vote buying, which couldn’t even be ignored by such prosecution, the judiciary sends the massage that the corruption is not a reason to end up in jail.
For that reason we invite the Judicial Council to establish the motives of Judge Ljiljana Popovic which were the reason why she decided in such manner, discredited her colleagues and the profession, and also endangered the process of European integration, actually to examine whether she was under pressure, intimidated, incompetent or politically passionate when she decided for such offense to impose minimum penalty, which is far below the statutory minimum. In fact, the Criminal Code provides that for the abuse of official power exclusive sentence is jail incarceration from 6 months to 12 years. In case that the damage caused by the offence is more than 3.000 euros and less than 30.000 euros, prescribed sentence is between one to eight years in prison.
We especially note that by the new Penal Code sentencing policy for the abuse of office power is further tightened, with the explanation that shows the willingness of the state to deal with corruption and to progress in the process of European integration. Judgment of the Court in Pljevlja just confirmed that the law is a dead letter on the paper, and that trapped institutions would not adequately capture actors of political corruption.
MANS
