"Country of relatives" put the important topic of employment in the overburdened public sector at the heart of the public debate - a topic that the Alternative Institute has been dealing with since its foundation, trying to cover as many aspects as possible.
I thought it useful to give my review, based on a fair amount of research and analysis on this topic. I have to admit that the author of the film contacted me some time ago to give a comment. Even though I was on a break from my usual duties due to parental leave, I was tempted to agree. After a brief presentation of the concept, which didn't seem in line with my approach and knowledge of the topic, I still didn't continue the communication. That's why I have no right to complain that, apart from people from politics, there was no one from a neutral field in the show. Media and journalists normally like to use the voice of the "NGO sector" as a third party or an arbiter, often of undeserved status, because on many issues we do not share the same voice or have the same opinion, nor do we have the same pre-history of dealing with the topic.
Thus, in this case, I do not share the position of some colleagues who have determined the findings of this show as "duture" as work for the prosecution.
I am sure that among the presented cases of employment of relatives or party comrades there are illegalities that would deserve a harsher reaction from the authorities, as we heard along the way that the inspection determined that, "if I am not mistaken", an employment contract was illegally concluded in one company in the majority state ownership.
But the show didn't offer us anything beyond that. She did not go into the procedures that were used to get a truly astounding network of relatives, godfathers and acquaintances employed where she was employed, except by the way, again sporadically. One of those examples is already known, when the Minister of Agriculture Vladimir Joković, instead of the first-ranked candidate, hired the last candidate from the ranking list. And then the journalist contacted me. In addition to the part that was broadcast, about how the law is backward in the part of candidate selection and some general positions, I also tried to point out that the law is so full of loopholes, and the testing is subject to so many abuses, that the fact that someone is ranked first does not mean that it is necessarily the best. We had confirmation of this very quickly in the same Ministry, in which, in the second recruitment procedure, an inspector who was ranked first on the list of the Human Resources Administration was proposed for appointment, even though she was previously suspected of abuse of position.
These illogicalities are difficult to untangle. That's why, although represented, this topic in public discourse rarely goes beyond first and last names and one-time criticism, when a first-ranking relative or a person of questionable integrity is hired, as well as a third-ranking party colleague. Most often, there is no further commitment in the years of a system built upside down, which is so loose and fragmented, that even the elementary rule of prior advertising does not exist for a large number of jobs in the public sector. We have described all of this in detail in the risk map of inappropriate influences and corruption during employment in the public sector (https://mapa-rizika.me), which is available to all journalists, as a tool to better understand and locate often complicated procedures and rules. written with the aim that anyone who wants to seriously deal with the topic of employment will get lost in them.
However, this cannot be an excuse for ignoring them.
Just as the difference between political involvement, appointment to boards of directors, and employment cannot be ignored. This is exactly what the show does when it puts on the same plane the previously known case of the aunt of President Jakov Milatović - a councilwoman in the capital city, the appointment to the board of directors and the conclusion of a work contract. Everyone has the right to vote and be elected, in accordance with the Constitution and the law. We know that the electoral law could be better, and that the aunt might not have been elected if there were open instead of closed lists. But that is already a topic of electoral legislation, not party recruitment. The criteria for the election of councilors in the Assembly of the Capital City and an independent officer in a majority state-owned company simply cannot be the same. That's why by putting the procedure of taking over or filling a job, on the one hand, and the election of a councilwoman, on the other, in the same basket, the topic of employment is unnecessarily diffused, but also obscured. In the end, it then ceases to be a topic of employment.
On the other hand, I must admit that I enjoyed the selective morality of the interlocutors in the show, which enviably systematized the extent of nepotism and politicization - an inexhaustible topic in Montenegro. Interlocutors only understand the nuances of rules and procedures when it comes to them. And this is something that has become very clear since the changes in 2020 - employment based on merit is demanded only by the opposition and non-governmental organizations, although both without a common solution and idea.
We tried our best to offer some, in the Invitation to Break with the Partitocracy, but we received two responses from MPs willing to dialogue - from MPs Radinka Ćinćur and Drita Lola.
With gratitude that the program of Television News, despite all the objections sketched here, brought this important topic back to the forefront, we hope that the list of decision-makers ready for reform will grow over time, and that our appeals will serve to move this topic away from mutual confrontation. finger-pointing by politicians of different orientations to concrete solutions, which will not be trampled on in the first subsequent elections. Otherwise, the networks will continue to branch out, names and surnames to line up, quite inexhaustibly - for many more episodes of the "cousin state" but also the state of bad laws, corruption and inappropriate politicization.
Alternative Institute
Bonus video:
