In just one week, € 59,000 was paid out of the budget reserve in various forms of aid to natural persons during the pre-election campaign. Over 80% of those funds were paid to citizens of municipalities where local elections will be held.
We call on the MPs not to support the proposed Budget Rebalance, which increases the budget reserve by over 18 million euros, because this Government obviously continues the bad practice of the previous regime of allocating these funds without any criteria in the pre-election period.
In the period from September 12-18, 2022, funds were paid from the budget reserve to natural persons based on the Decisions of the Government Commission for the allocation of part of the funds of the budget reserve, whose chairman is Ervin Ibrahimović, and his deputy is Aleksandar Damjanović.
Aid was paid to 118 persons from 16 municipalities, which amounted to around 500 euros per person on average. Most of the money was allocated to the citizens of the municipalities where the elections will be held. Thus, over 25,000 euros was allocated to 52 people in Podgorica, 12,000 euros to 22 people in Rožaje, and 5,000 euros to 11 people in Bar. In other municipalities where elections will be held (Bijelo Polje, Budva, Pljevlja, Kolašin, Plav, Tivat, Danilovgrad), nearly six thousand euros was allocated to 11 people.
The decisions of the Government Commission approved the payment of funds to natural persons for overcoming a difficult financial situation, treatment and education based on the Rulebook on closer criteria for usage of budget funds of the current and permanent budgetary reserves.
That Rulebook was adopted by the DPS’ Government back in 2009, and apart from the amount, it does not define any criteria on the basis of which the funds should be allocated. This is exactly how numerous abuses of the budget reserve for social benefits were previously carried out in the pre-election period.
Namely, that Rulebook enables the circumvention of a number of laws and regulations, based on which institutions assess whether a citizen needs help, and instead, the decision is made by politicians without any criteria.
Because of such practices, the law prohibits budget reserve funds from being used to assist natural persons in election years, but that provision has been suspended due to the decision on COVID epidemic which is still in force.
Thanks to this, in its technical mandate, the Government continues to allocate money to citizens ahead of the local elections, without any criteria.
At the same time, that Government proposes the Budget Rebalance, which increases the budget reserve by 18.2 million euros. They claim that part of that money will be spent on the Health Insurance Fund and the strengthening of the security IT infrastructure, but there is no explanation for the increase in the budget reserve of 8.7 million euros.
That is why we call on the MPs not to support the Budget Rebalance, because it contains hidden increase in spending that may have an impact on voters in the pre-election campaign for local elections.
MANS
