Just one day before the prohibition on the payment of social welfare from the budget reserve came into force, the Government of Montenegro paid out additional 57 thousand euros for those purposes, using the postponement of the implementation of the budget rebalance and continuing the practice of non-transparent spending of money ahead of the upcoming elections.
The Law on Amendments to the Law on the Budget of Montenegro for 2022, according to which the budget rebalance was implemented, provides for the prohibition of payments to natural persons from the budget reserve. This provision was introduced after the pressure created by MANS in the public due to the continuation of the practice of allocating money in the pre-election period without clear and transparent criteria.
The rebalance and the aforementioned prohibition came into force on October 11, 2022, but only one day earlier, the Government decided to pay 125 persons one-off financial aid in the total amount of 57,000 euros. The payments related to help for the so-called improvement of the financial situation, treatment and education, and the individual amounts ranged from 300 to 1000 euros.
The data published by MANS thus far show that from the day of the calling of the elections until the budget rebalance, the Government of Montenegro paid close to 150,000 euros from the reserve on the basis of one-off financial aid to citizens.
Additional 50,000 for damages caused by natural disasters
In addition to social welfare, last week, the Government also paid close to 50,000 euros on the basis of compensation for damages caused by natural disasters to 48 people. The allocation of these funds is based on the decisions of the Damage Assessment Commission headed by Zoran Miljanić, Minister without Portfolio. The decisions on the basis of which the Commission paid out the mentioned 50 thousand euros are still not available on the website of the Agency for Prevention of Corruption (APC).
At the beginning of September, Miljanić requested and received an additional 500,000 euros from the Government, which will be allocated by his Commission until the end of this year. It is interesting that in the previous, non-election year, 2021, there were no payments from the budget reserve on this basis.
All of the above points to the conclusion that the Government of Montenegro and the majority of parties that make up the executive power still do not have the political will to free the electoral process from practices established during the thirty-year rule of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS).
MANS continuously points to the need for the use the budget reserve in the pre-election period to get rid of suspicion of corruption by prescribing clear and transparent criteria for its allocation, but the latest decisions of the Government of Montenegro show how much effort is being made to postpone and discredit the necessary reforms.
MANS
