Centre for Civic Education (CCE) considers that the Montenegrin public should have access to coalition agreements on formation of the Government of Montenegro, in order to acquire a factual context of the extent to which the public authorities are really professionalized and depoliticized, and to what extent it remains in the party “chains”.
As a reminder, on 27 November 2016 the Democratic Party of Socialists has signed an Agreement on joint political action and formation of a parliamentary majority for a term 2016-2020 with its coalition partners – the Bosniak Party, the Social Democrats, the Croatian Civic Initiative, the coalition “Albanians Determined” and the Liberal Party. Although the constitution of the latter, i.e. 41 in a row Government of Montenegro was preceded by signing of political agreement on formation of the executive power, the public remains deprived of the substance of political agreement, which significantly affects lives of the citizens of Montenegro.
Thus, for the Montenegrin, but also other interested public, it remains unknown on what basis and principles the political agreement on formation of the Government of Montenegro was concluded between the coalition partners, what is the content of this agreement, in what manner it distributes power in detail and whether during this distribution there occurred possibility of violation of the existing legal framework, as well as the obligations undertaken on the path to the European Union. Such demonstration of lack of transparency calls into question the existence of functioning democratic institutions and establishment of an effective system of professionalization of the state administration.
CCE urges all constituents of the authority to, as soon as possible, disclose the content of political agreement on formation of the Government of Montenegro, and thereby prove that there is nothing to be hidden from the judgment of the public. Furthermore, CCE again calls on the Government and Parliament of Montenegro to put to procedure and adopt the Law on Government, in order to finally establish a clear framework of executive power, and contribute to its depoliticization as well as to avoid political trade with the highest state positions for the purpose of satisfying the party interests without any argumentative explanations to indicate the public interest for abolition or establishment of ministries and administrations in the Government, according to different coalition realignments.
Vladimir Vučković, CCE programme associate