For more than half a year, the Secretariat-General of the Government of Montenegro has refused to make public a dozen decisions of the inner cabinet of the Government of Duško Marković from 2019 and 2020, some of which were made during the so-called technical mandate of the outgoing DPS government.
The decisions requested by MANS based on the Law on Free Access to Information refer to payments from the current budget reserve, and it is not yet known what the amounts are because the Secretariat-General of the previous government marked them CLASSIFIED. The document rejecting the request of MANS states that all decisions of the inner cabinet were declared secret in advance back in 2012, based on the decision of the then Prime Minister, Igor Lukšić.
Response of the Secretariat-General of the Government of Montenegro
The Secretariat-General of the Government of Zdravko Krivokapić first claimed that they did not have the requested documents, although in its requests MANS pointed out specific reference numbers and dates when the above-mentioned decisions of the inner cabinet were adopted. A few months later, and following the decisions of the Agency for Personal Data Protection and Free Access to Information, they admitted that the requested decisions existed, but they were marked CONFIDENTIAL.
First response of the Secretariat-General
According to the Decree on the Government of Montenegro, the inner cabinet consists of the President, Vice Presidents and Secretary General of the Government, i.e. in case of disputed decisions, Duško Marković, Milutin Simović, Zoran Pažin, (deceased) Rafet Husović and former Secretary General Nataša Pešić.
The same decree stipulates that “the inner cabinet may decide on the use of funds from the current budget reserve, in accordance with the criteria determined by the Government.” However, the Rulebook on detailed criteria for the use of current and permanent budget reserves defines only the types and amounts of costs that can be covered from the reserve, but not the criteria on the basis of which decisions on the payment of these funds would be made.
MANS, which previously analyzed the abuse of budget funds for electoral purposes, warns that the same situation is with the decisions of the inner cabinet of the Government of Duško Marković, which were not only discretionary and passed without publicly known criteria, but are still kept as a state secret from the public.
According to the Rulebook on detailed criteria for the use of the budget reserve, funds from this budget item can be used to “provide missing funds for spending units, aid to legal persons as well as aid to natural persons for treatment, education, improvement of financial situation (welfare).”
According to MANS, none of these categories of spending state money should be secret, as well as that, bearing in mind the previous practice before the elections, the motives of Duško Marković’s inner cabinet to mark the decisions on payments as CONFIDENTIAL are clear.
“MANS continuously points out that the best international practice dictates that all information on how money from the budget is spent must be available to all citizens, with exceptions that are well defined so as not to leave room for abuses such as we have the opportunity to see in this case,” Dejan Milovac, director of the MANS Investigative Centre, stated.
He adds that in the previous period, we have witnessed too often situations when the previous government used the budget reserve for the payment of welfare before the elections, donations to municipalities where elections are held, public works, and similar activities by which the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) dominantly achieved the so-called institutional advantage.
“That is why the sluggishness of the new government is surprising when it comes to the efforts of civil society and the media to make public and transparent as much information as possible about bad practices, especially those that have led to spending of citizens’ money,” Milovac notes.
“It is inadmissible that the new executive government, which sees itself as “the most transparent government in the history of Montenegro”, continues to hide information that can only suit those who made decisions to the detriment of the budget and interests of Montenegro’s citizens in the past 30 years”, Milovac states and adds many reasons for concern when it comes to the transparency of the work of state institutions, but also when it comes to the long-awaited reform in this area.
“It would not be good for the adoption and continuation of bad practices in the field of spending state funds to be one of the key reasons for the now obvious lack of political will to reform the area of free access to information, both at the legislative level and in concrete practice.”
MANS has therefore called on the Secretariat-General and the Government of Montenegro to immediately remove the marks from all decisions of the inner cabinet related to the spending of funds from the budget.
MANS
