President of the Parliamentary Committee on Economics Finance and Budget Aleksandar Damjanovic once again grossly abused his position in this committee and again prevented representatives of MANS to participate in the work of this body in which today was scheduled control hearing regarding the implementation of agreements between the Government of Montenegro and the Italian company A2A. The realization of this contract in which are included more than unusual relations between the First Bank of Montenegro and the EPCG (National Power Supply Company) , are the topic that Damjanovic obviously does not want to open on his Board and once again confirm the specific relationship that he has toward the First Bank and the family of Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic.
MANS in the past two years to the mentioned Committee submitted a total of ten Applications for participation in the work of that body, out of which nine cases were denied. Damjanovic prohibited MANS to participate in the debate on topics such as taking over KAP’s debt, the Law on VAT, the Law on Budget of Montenegro, the Law on Financing of Political Parties, and parliamentary oversight of its implementation, and now on implementation of the contract on EPCG.
In any way we did not receive any written explanation or even a hint of the reasons why Damjanovic continually refuses to allow representatives of MANS to participate in the work of the Committee. When in comes to the last session in the series, MANS unsuccessfully tried to get from the Board any written response to our request to participate in the session. In addition to MANS’s request to participate in the session demanded NGO Green Home NGO Alternativa Institute.
Completely not disputing the quality of the contribution that the Green Home will give on today’s hearing, Damjanovic had no limits on the number of organizations that could refer to, especially since MANS is in public already recognized as someone who is involved in the recapitalization of EPCG from the beginning and thanks to which many of the details of the work of this company and A2A management in general are discovered. One of the recent topics that we dealt with was on relations that EPCG had with the First Bank of Montenegro and under what conditions that company helped the bank of the prime minister’s brother, Aco Djukanovic.
In this regard, there is no dispute that the representative MANS could significantly contribute to the debate on control hearing, but after another rejection of our application it is quite obvious that the quality of the discussion is not the reason that affected Damjanovic when he completely arbitrarily decided to once again exclude MANS from the Committee’s work.
Currently there are no any kind of criteria for assessing the justification of application of NGOs to participate in different Parliamentary bodies, which Damjanovic undoubtedly uses for the sake of personal animosity, practically closing the opportunity to discuss certain topics discussed on his board.
Such autocratic behavior and Damjanovic himself sent a bad picture of the openness of the Parliament and his willingness to under the roof of that institution to start and address issues of indisputable public interest, especially since MANS rarely had any problem when in comes to other committees. In this regard, MANS will in the following period initiate prescribing of a clear criteria for the selection of organizations which participate in the parliamentary bodies in order to avoid in the future that the members of the Parliament like Damjanovic their position misuse to protect themselves or those whose interests try to guard from unpleasant topics and questions.
MANS
