At the beginning of this week, the Agency for Prevention of Corruption (APC) rejected 23 complaints filed by MANS against several institutions at the state and local level due to suspicion that during August, they violated the Law on Financing of Political Entities and Election Campaigns, i.e. they spent more than prescribed by the Law. In addition, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Education, which spent 19 million more than the legal limit in one month of the election campaign alone, are completely exempt from application of the Law.
Article 38 of that Law stipulates that the budgetary spending units shall be prohibited from monthly spending higher than the average monthly spending in the previous six months from the day of calling of the elections until the day of holding of the elections.
Contrary to that, APC interpreted that the restriction does not come into force from the day of calling of the elections, but from the first following calendar month. As the elections were called on August 2, the opinion of the APC was that the prohibition only applies to budget spending in September.
With this interpretation, APC enabled state institutions to spend their budgets unhindered during August, the first month of the pre-election campaign, creating space for abuse of those funds for political purposes.
MANS’ initiatives rejected by the APC related to excessive spending during August by the Employment Agency, the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, the Pension and Disability Insurance Fund, the Ministry of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Bureau for the Execution of Criminal Sanctions, the Ministry of Culture and Media, the Railway Administration, the Ministry of Defence, the Administration for Food Safety, Veterinary and Phytosanitary Affairs, the Parliament of Montenegro, the Institute of Education, the State Archives, the Prosecutorial Council, the Administration for Cooperation with Diaspora-Emigrants, the National Security Agency, the Centre for Alternative Dispute Resolution , the Water Administration, the Administration for Inspection Affairs, and several authorities of the Capital City Podgorica.
This type of restriction was introduced in the Law on Financing of Political Entities and Election Campaigns due to the widespread practice of obvious abuses of budget funds during the pre-election campaign, and the fact that parties whose staff manages institutions and public institutions at the state and local level often use the state budget to influence voters and political promotion.
That is why the APC’s interpretation of the Law, which allows state bodies to spend budget funds without any restrictions in the midst of an election campaign, is completely absurd and wrong.
In addition to refusing to act in cases of overspending in August, with its decisions, the Agency completely exempted the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Education from the application of the law, whose overspending was recorded in the month of September.
Namely, APC rejected the initiatives for these two state institutions with the explanation that they were formed only on April 28, 2022 (by election of the 43rd Government of Montenegro), thus, the average six-month consumption cannot be determined. By this, APC exempted two institutions whose funds were abused to a significant extent in the pre-election period from the application of the Law.
The budget analysis that APC was able to easily carry out in the part related to the spending of these two ministries, showed that during September, the Ministry of Finance spent 6.1 million more than the legal limit, while the Ministry of Education exceeded the legal limit by as much as 12.9 million euros.
By misinterpreting the law and regulations governing the financing of political entities and election campaigns, the Agency for Prevention of Corruption continued to create harmful precedents that will continue to be an incentive for electoral abuses and political corruption in the future.
This completely discredits the control function of this institution and actually provides protection to those who find an interest in, in this case, abusing state resources to achieve a political advantage for their party.
MANS will definitely ask the competent authorities to review the decisions of the APC, and once again we urge that institution to abandon the practice of arbitrary interpretation of regulations in order that the decisions it makes are fully in line with the public interest.
MANS
