WORLD NEWS FOR MONTENEGRO DIASPORA
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The three years since the removal of the decades-long government of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) represent a turbulent period in which it was shown that the earlier bad opposition did not become a good government, and the earlier bad government did not position itself as a good opposition either, the executive director of the Center said in an interview for Antena M for civic education (CGO) Daliborka Uljarević.
She believes that today, as a result, disappointment prevails due to the disappointed expectations of those who wanted changes in the direction of substantive democratization and Europeanization.
This is accompanied by the perception that Montenegro is moving in a worse direction today than it was before the elections in August 2020, with a trend of falling trust in the institutions of the system, which is an additional burden for any structure that would go in the direction of serious reforms - pointed out Uljarević.
On a positive level, it indicates that we have experienced political change.
And it is good that the citizens of Montenegro today believe more in themselves and the power of their vote in terms of influencing the processes, which is also shown through the electoral processes, including the punishment of actors with the exceptionally low turnout that we witnessed in the June parliamentary elections. However, we also saw that the new majority remains firm on the worst practices of its predecessors, with a worrying lack of resistance to the harmful influences of undemocratic actors, both from the region and beyond, which made Montenegro an even more unreliable member of the NATO alliance and effectively blocked its path to the EU with worrying regression in many important issues, which is illustrated by the most negative EC reports since the opening of negotiations with the EU - stated the executive director of the CGE.
The successes cited by the representatives of the new government, as Uljarević points out, mainly relate to the work of the Prosecutor's Office, which is an independent body and which records the initial steps through the initiated proceedings and certain confirmed indictments.
But we still don't have any of those so-called of large cases that have been legally finalized by the court, which is the actual income statement that will be measured. However, it is important to note here that by appropriating those actions, the executive power also shows how it views what is defined by law as the independence of the Prosecutor's Office. In the meantime, the fact that this government does not respect court decisions is a mirror of the adherence to the law of the executive power, and its defenders, - pointed out Uljarević.
As she said, this is probably the most well-known, although not the only, example to the public that this government knowingly illegally dismissed the director of the Police Directorate, and that today we have at the head of that institution a person who is there without a legal basis, and that is a key government body in implementation of the law.
This is also an illustration of the fact that these authorities perceive the rule of law exclusively as the right to rule, and in that part they believe that all violations of the law are allowed to them in order to achieve their interests. Also, we had spontaneous spending through the public sector, which resulted in increases in material benefits from the Government to certain groups and an increase in salaries in the public sector, but this was all done without any analysis, and therefore it is realistically unsustainable and in many ways unfair - said Uljarević .
This, he says, is also one part through which it can be seen that party interests have prevailed over the public interest in creating public policies based on analysis, verified data, clear criteria and strategies for covering those costs in the long term.
It is worth reminding that the first two legal texts that were changed in the Parliament of Montenegro by the so-called of the August majority were the Law on Freedom of Religion or Belief and the Legal Status of Religious Communities and the Law on Civil Servants and State Employees. The first was changed in order to return the "debt" to the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC), whose petitions had a significant impact on the new structures coming to power - Uljarević points out.
He adds that the second, contrary to the earlier agreement with the European Commission, lowered the criteria for employment in the public administration and opened space for its further politicization.
This, unfortunately, remained the road map of the government in these three years, even though it was about two governments - satisfying the interests of the SPC at the cost of public and state interest, with the emphasis that the SPC is also one of the main mediums of achieving the influence in Montenegro of the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić , but also very attached to Putin's levers of power and his policy, as well as the aggressive distribution of the cake of the executive power according to the so-called depth and breadth, which today makes the executive power in many respects more incompetent than it was before August 2020 - believes Uljarević.
When it comes to European integration, Uljarević asserted that today we have a broken negotiation structure, we do not have a chief negotiator, and that the absorption capacity for EU funds has decreased.
The DPS has not been in power for three years, but the new authorities have adopted the manner of Vučić, so the new authorities continue to justify all their failures with the DPS, as Vučić does with the former DS, i.e. the "yellows" and also all those who have a critical deviation towards the way of their rule are trying to label and discredit in the most mundane way. It says a lot about role models, techniques, but also other inadequacies of those who have shown in these three years that they have only one complaint against DPS, and that is that they themselves were not able to use all the advantages brought by the government for decades - she concluded. Uljarević.
POBJEDA
