At a time when Montenegro is facing the biggest crisis in its modern history due to the epidemic of coronavirus, and it is at the very edge of the state of emergency, there is a concerning persistence of the Ministry of Public Administration and the Minister Suzana Pribilović to continue to insist on holding a public debate and consultation on amendments to the Law on Free Access to Information.
At the moment when representatives of Montenegro’s state institutions themselves are announcing that the epidemic is expected to culminate, it is clear that there are no elementary conditions to hold not only a proper, but any public debate.
On the other hand, what we recognize as the obvious intention of the line Ministry is an attempt to use the current state of affairs in the country to simulate in the most brutal way possible the process of citizen participation in passing a law defining one of the important civil rights.
The Ministry of Public Administration has for a long time been insisting on poor legal solutions that further restrict access to information, despite the resistance of the entire interested public, as well as very specific criticism from the international community.
The attempt to obtain a simulated public legitimacy for such decisions right now is an audacious opportunism of the line ministry, which defies all the principles of good public administration.
Instead of promoting the principles of openness and accountability in times of general danger, the Ministry of Public Administration is constantly working on creating the assumption that the citizens of Montenegro will have even less information about the work of the Government and its bodies in the coming period.
In the crisis Montenegro is in, perhaps more than before, it is necessary for the public to know how state money is managed, and for the state institutions to leave a minimum room for suspicion that the state budget is being misused.
Previous experience regarding the transparency of spending of the state budget has been far from positive, and the situation of reduced public attention and already limited access to state-owned information is certainly a fertile ground for abuse and corruption.
The Government of Montenegro has already announced assistance to the economy and citizens and it is very important for this process to be as transparent as possible, without favouring individuals and companies. The intention of the Ministry of Public Administration to introduce a regulation that significantly restricts the public’s right to know in this manner does not contribute to this.
For this reason, we once again urge the Ministry of Public Administration to postpone the public debate and consultation on this important law until the basic democratic conditions for its holding are met. Any other decision is a contribution to the continuation of the practice of withholding information from the citizens of Montenegro.
Dejan Milovac
Director of the Investigative Centre
MANS
