Last week, the Government’s Commission for allocation of funds from the budget reserve paid out as much as 134 thousand euros for various types of social benefits, thus continuing the practice of all previous governments to allocate these types of funds without clearly defined and transparent criteria just before the election processes.
Abuse of social benefits during election campaigns is one of the most frequently used mechanisms of influencing potential voters and has been harshly criticized by former opposition political parties. For years, tens and hundreds of thousands of euros of social benefits were paid out from the budget reserve precisely during pre-election campaigns, and cases like the Center for Social Work in Pljevlja only confirmed that this mechanism was crucial for achieving political advantage on the ground.
For a long time, MANS and other NGOs have been asking for greater transparency and clear criteria for the payment of social benefits which is an appeal to which even the former opposition parties that now make up the executive power did not respond to. Instead, the pattern created by the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) continued, thus, even during this election campaign, there were payments from the budget reserve that open up a huge space for abuse for political purposes.
Thus, out of the mentioned 134 thousand euros, close to 50 thousand was paid for improvement of the financial situation, 42 people received aid for education in the total amount of about 21 thousand euros, while about 59 thousand was paid as aid for treatment. Additional five thousand euros was paid as aid to legal entities.
In this way, aid was paid to as many as 300 people last week, ranging from 300 to 1,500 euros. The largest number of beneficiaries, 93 of them, received aid of 400 euros each.
Current Rulebook on the allocation of funds from the budget reserve dates back to 2009, when it was adopted by the government of Milo Đukanović and which, apart from the amount, does not define the criteria according to which this money can be paid, which has created a huge space for abuse right before the elections.
The latest in a series of non-transparent payments of budget funds during the pre-election campaign is a confirmation of the lack of political will to carry out essential reform when it comes to electoral processes in Montenegro. This does not only refer to the reform of the law, but above all to changing the harmful practice with the help of which the previous government won the elections in the last three decades.
In order for that to happen, it is necessary to put the public interest before the private and party interest, for which the political parties that make up the new executive power are obviously still not ready. It is precisely the abuse of social benefits along with the complete normalization of party employment in public administration and state companies, that are recognized as mechanisms that were completely taken over from the previous government and are unrestrainedly used in order to build their own political base at the expense of the budget and all citizens.
This is a practice that needs to be stopped, and until that happens, we cannot talk about fair election process and the release of institutions that should serve citizens, not political parties and their leaders.
MANS
