Centre for Civic Education (CCE), Center for Development of Non-Governmental Organizations (CRNVO), Institute Alternative (IA) and Center for Monitoring (CEMI) express serious concern about the work of Administrative Committee, whose competence is to check documentation of candidates for members of the RTCG Council, and they invite the public interested in this process, which governing structure is obviously trying to make meaningless, to monitor closely and influence it to be conducted lawfully until the end.
After receiving all candidacies of authorized proponents, on 18 March 2014, the Administrative Committee published so called The List of Timely and Completed Proposals for Member of the RTCG Council. The number of support was reduced to the selected candidates, mostly to those who were proposed by the NGOs, without any clear explanation, based on unknown and unlawful criteria. It is indicative, for example, that for the candidates Goran Đurović and Slavica Striković the documentation/support of some of the leading critically-oriented Montenegrin NGOs candidates was rejected as “untimely and incomplete” or that complete support from some northern and southern towns of Montenegro, associations of people with disabilities etc, even though they were properly and timely submitted was not accepted as valid. In addition, there is no publicly available Administrative Committee record from which it would be possible to find out what exactly was missing in the documentation of each candidate or any kind of information that could clarify the method Administrative Committee used while making the list that was published yesterday, and the basis on which Administrative Committee rejected dozens of support from NGOs of different profiles from throughout Montenegro and that way discriminated a large number of NGOs, as well as candidates themselves.
Since yesterday, according to the Law on Free Access to Information, our representatives started getting insight into an extensive documentation of all candidates. Four of our representatives who have been working on that case, on basis of less than 30% of reviewed documentation already noticed numerous irregularities in the work of Administrative Committee, which require determining the responsibility of those who worked on reviewing of this documentation.
Thus, CCE, CRNVO, IA and CEMI invite the Administrative Committee to cancel the list published yesterday, review the documentation again strictly following the legal provisions and not personal preferences, make the list of candidates and rank them in a way prescribed by the law: number of received support, with a precondition that all the other legal requirements are met as well.
Also, CCE, CRNVO, IA and CEMI invite all nominated candidates to get actively involved in the process of verification of the documentation and in that way contribute to the legality of the procedure. Making the will of NGOs meaningless, introducing criteria based on someone’s party or family closeness with those who make decisions, violation of the law by the Parliament through introduction of double standards for documentation assessment or incomprehensible „dilemma“ if „it is possible to eliminate a candidate because of bureaucratic procedure or verification of the application”, as well as public research on prejudices towards specific candidates by members of Administrative Board – represent concrete illegal actions and dangerous political messages that are in a complete contrast with the commitment of the government to establish a system of rule of law, especially when they come from the Parliament itself.