Having been silent for almost three months regarding flight by the state aircraft to Paris on New Year’s Eve, President Milo Đukanović has now offered the public a theory that it was actually an official trip during which he performed some “duties in the interest of Montenegro”.
The public will unlikely find out what are those state affairs anytime soon, because according to Đukanović, those are affairs “of which the public is not informed”, at least not until they are finalized, as he said.
The public of Montenegro has already had the opportunity to see that it is not a problem for Đukanović to publicly state untruths when it comes to his private affairs, when he hid the ownership of a company registered in Cyprus from the competent authorities.
For this reason, we believe that the response that those were “some secret affairs” of which the public is not informed, is unworthy of his office and is a reflection of irresponsibility towards citizens and the Constitution of Montenegro, which binds him to publicity and transparency.
Information on who and why used the state aircraft on December 29 last year is still hidden by the Secretariat-General of the Government of Montenegro, which has it at its disposal. This service labelled the information as confidential, not because of the confidentiality of the affair itself, but as they said, because of the security of the protected persons who were on the flight.
The right of the public to know is continuously violated by the very service of the President of Montenegro, which completely ignored the request for free access to information sent by MANS back in mid-January.
According to Đukanović, the State Prosecutor’s Office and other state bodies were informed about Đukanović’s secret state affairs, which he conducted in Paris.
The Prime Minister Duško Markovic is clearly not one of those state authorities, as just a day before he told the press regarding Đukanović’s flight that he “does not know, and it is not his job to know who is using the state aircraft.”
Withholding information from the public has become a way of work for most state authorities, especially in cases where that information may indicate corruption, or in the case of Đukanović’s flight to Paris, abuse of office.
Such behaviour is unacceptable, especially when there is a concerted effort by several state authorities to withhold information from citizens.
The unanswered questions, especially those related to the work of the highest state bodies, are fertile ground for growing public distrust of their lawful acts, independence and resistance to corruption.
Dejan Milovac
Director of the MANS Investigative Centre
MANS
