Centre for Civic Education (CCE) welcomes the reaction of the Deputy Prime Minister for Security, Defence, the Fight against Crime and Internal Policy, Aleksa Bečić, whose office, only 52 minutes after CCE’s statement on the lack of transparency of the Government’s General Secretariat (GGS), published part of its expenditures related to official travel. Such a swift response from decision-makers confirms the purpose and importance of our critical approach in serving the public interest.
However, the CCE regrets that Deputy Prime Minister Bečić’s office did not acknowledge this as a positive outcome but instead sought to portray our work as unnecessary, claiming that all the data were already publicly available. That was not true at the time of our statement – neither for the information subsequently released nor for the rest, which still remains unavailable. We hope that Deputy Prime Minister Bečić will publish all the information that the GGS is still withholding concerning his office and, by doing so, encourage his colleagues to improve the overall level of transparency and accountability in the use of public resources.
The CCE believes that information on public officials’ expenditures must be easily accessible, regularly updated, and systematically published as a standard across the entire Government and its institutions — not as an exception triggered only by public criticism.
Malicious remarks directed against the civil sector do not contribute to the perception of good governance. The CCE therefore reminds that this issue did not concern only official travel expenses. In fact, in our previous analyses of the former composition of the Parliament of Montenegro, we highlighted Bečić as a positive example of transparency and of waiving per diems for official trips during his tenure as Speaker of the Parliament — a fact seemingly overlooked by his current staff. In our most recent analysis of Deputy Prime Minister Bečić’s activities, our criticism was primarily directed at the fact that his office is almost entirely staffed by officials and members of the Democrats party. The CCE considers that senior government officials should bring together professional teams of diverse backgrounds and perspectives, especially given that political hiring remains one of the major problems of this Government as well.
We remind that the CCE has been trying for months to obtain basic information from the GGS, which, through so-called “administrative silence,” has refused to provide data on the gross and net salaries of the staff in the offices of five deputy prime ministers and one minister covered by our analysis, as well as their travel expenses, per diems, representation costs, office rental and furnishing expenses, office supplies, telephone bills, fuel, depreciation and use of official vehicles, and related costs of employees in those offices. As the GGS has failed to provide these data, we have been forced to publicly react for the second time in the past two months.
We hope that the reaction of Deputy Prime Minister Bečić will prompt the Government’s General Secretariat to finally respond to our requests and ensure that all the requested data are published in full — not partially.
Nikola Mirković, Programme Associate