The Parliamentary Inquiry Committee, which deals with cases of allegedly politically motivated murders and attacks on journalists and intellectuals, has held only one session in its two months of existence and has at most a month and a half left to collect information about these events.
On 20 February, in anticipation of the election campaign in Nikšić, the Parliament adopted a decision to open a parliamentary investigation and form an Inquiry Committee, which entered into force on 11 March, with the publication in the Official Gazette. The Legislative Chamber gave the committee 90 days from the publication in the Official Gazette to conduct the investigation and prepare a report (the deadline expires on 9 June), with the possibility of a 15-day extension. However, so far the only session of this body was held on 25 March.
The head of the parliamentary group of the opposition Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), Andrija Nikolić, was elected as the chairman of the committee, and the leader and MP of the ruling Democratic People's Party (DNP), Milan Knežević, was voted as his deputy. The parliamentary majority thus dropped the proposal that the position of chairman of the committee be filled by United Montenegro MP Vladimir Dobričanin, after messages from the opposition that they would not participate in the work of the body if that MP led it, or if a candidate for chairman was imposed on them.
Nikolić told "Vijesti" yesterday that the board will hold an "informal meeting" at the beginning of next week and agree on the further dynamics of the work.
He did not precisely answer the newspaper's questions - why there have been no sessions since March 25, how the committee plans to complete the investigation and the report it needs to submit to the legislative chamber given the short period left for that, whether the (in)work of the committee is an indication that it was formed for daily political purposes, and whether this kind of "work" of the committee renders the control role of parliament meaningless. Knežević did not respond to the journalist's messages.
According to the Law on Parliamentary Investigation, inquiry committees are authorized, among other things, to request from all state bodies, local self-government bodies, institutions and legal entities to submit for their inspection all documentation that could be of importance for the investigation, and these entities are obliged to act on these requests and provide truthful information.
Also, managers, officials and employees in state bodies, local self-government bodies and institutions, legal entities, former holders of state functions in the executive and legislative branches, former and current local self-government officials, are obliged to respond to the summons of the inquiry committee and to provide truthful statements.
The decision to establish the committee also states that the body will also invite all other persons it assesses to be aware of certain facts related to the subject of the parliamentary investigation.
Although the committee's term of office is fixed, it can be extended by amending the decision.
Inefficiency
Project associate at the Institute Alternative (IA), Bojana Pravilović, assessed that if this committee is ineffective in fulfilling its role, it would be just another example in a series of failures of the constitutional institute of parliamentary investigation and, she claims, new evidence of weak parliamentary control.
She stated that the public does not have information about the reasons for not scheduling a new session of the committee, and that the dynamics of its work speak of inefficiency and "possibly indicate the potential for the work to fail to produce results."
"It is necessary for the President of the Inquiry Committee to provide answers to the questions of why this committee does not meet more often and how he intends to make the committee's work efficient and thus ensure that the goals and tasks set out in the decision on its establishment are met within the stated deadlines," she told "Vijesti".
At the committee's only meeting, its members unanimously decided to deal with the murders of Pavle Bulatović, Duško Jovanović, Slavoljub Šćekić, Darko Beli Raspopović, Goran Žugić, Miloš Miško Krstović, Mladen Klikovac, Blagota Bajo Sekulić, and Srđan Vojičić.
It was also agreed that they would deal with cases of attacks on a number of journalists and intellectuals - Duško Jovanović, Gojko Mitrović, Tufik Softić, Željko Ivanović, Radovan Aleksić, Predrag Šuković, Vojo Laković, Mladen Stojović, Jevrem Brković, Momir Vojvodić and Aleksandar Saša Pejanović, and Milan Knežević proposed that the attack on Olivera Lakić be added to this list.
The DPS proposal to investigate the assassination of Vuk Drašković in Budva and the arrest of a group of people in the former Hotel Crna Gora on the eve of the 1997 presidential elections, who were allegedly preparing an attack on then-candidate Milo Đukanović, was also supported.
Andrija Nikolić said at the time that, after precisely defining the decisions, he would send the initiative to the Ministry of Justice and, after receiving its opinion, convene a new session.
He told "Vijesti" yesterday that they recently received a response from the Ministry to a query regarding the cases that the committee members agreed to investigate, i.e. which of those cases are currently in court.
"The answer is quite extensive, and we have only just started reading it...", said Nikolić.
They are undermining the oversight function of parliament.
Pravilović said that opening parliamentary investigations and forming an inquiry committee is a mechanism available to MPs, and that it should be used when possible, “that is, when a certain case is not subject to court proceedings.” She stated that, according to the Law on Parliamentary Investigation, the inquiry committee should collect information, determine circumstances and facts “that will help objectively perceive the truth and compile an objective report on the work of the committee.”
He points out that, however, talking about the effects of this mechanism is "an entirely different matter."
"In order to improve the work of this mechanism, amendments to the law are needed. This would include regulating the functioning of the inquiry committee, the manner of conducting the investigation, reporting to the Parliament, a special budget that would ensure autonomy and independence in its work. It is also necessary to introduce penal provisions for failure to provide information, failure to respond to a summons to testify, and false testimony," she stated.
The interviewee points out that this would enable more efficient functioning of the committee, whose work would then, she claims, actually lead to the collection of information and facts about the events and the preparation of an objective report. She added that by conducting parliamentary investigations "like we have had in previous years" and adopting technical reports, the control function of the highest legislative chamber is being undermined.
"This is not the only way to collapse - by not adopting minority initiatives, holding control hearings months after the initiatives have been adopted, reports without conclusions... all of this is part of the Parliament's control function that is continuously weakening," says Pravilović.
They are preparing material for cigarette smuggling.
In mid-March, a proposal to form an inquiry committee to investigate the actions of state bodies and other entities related to cigarette smuggling in Montenegro was submitted to the parliamentary procedure. However, this proposal has not yet been placed on the parliamentary agenda.
The president of the Democratic Party parliamentary group, Boris Bogdanović, told "Vijesti" that "aware of the complexity of the topic and the volume and number of cases and material that could potentially be considered and requested from the competent institutions", they are working on "precisely defining the methodology and selecting priority cases", so that the committee, immediately upon its constitution, "can begin a serious, substantively thorough and legally based process".
He said that cigarette smuggling is a problem that has lasted for almost three decades, "with a huge number of participants and cases that are intertwined," and that precisely because of this complexity, none of the cases in which criminal proceedings are being conducted can be the subject of investigation.
"Therefore, it is crucial that, before the committee begins its work, we submit precisely specified cases to the Ministry of Justice, so that it can state whether criminal proceedings are being conducted in them. In addition, we want to avoid cases in which prosecutorial investigations are possibly being conducted. Otherwise, after its formation, the committee would have to subsequently submit inquiries for each individual case and wait 30 days for the Ministry's response, which would significantly jeopardize the efficiency of its work," he said.
Bogdanović said that, in this context, "with a team and in coordination with organizations that have experience in combating smuggling," they are currently preparing material that will be submitted to the Parliament and the Ministry of Justice.
"I particularly emphasize that the inquiry committee has a limited working period, and that every day must be used for a concrete institutional contribution," he said.
They also investigated the "Snimak" and "Telekom" scandals without success.
Bojana Pravilović says that in 2012 and 2013, there were two inquiry committees investigating the "Snimak" and "Telekom" scandals, but that no agreement was reached at that time, but rather that technical reports were adopted.
She stated that in 2021, there were two initiatives to open an investigation and form a committee, regarding the actions of the security services (Ministry of Interior, National Security Agency and Police Administration) regarding the enthronement of Metropolitan Joanikije of Montenegro and the Littoral in Cetinje on September 4 and 5 of that year, as well as regarding the Možura wind farm project.
"The initiative to form an inquiry committee for the events in Cetinje was adopted the second time, but the inquiry committee was not formed, and in the meantime a new convocation of the Parliament was formed. The Administrative Committee did not form an inquiry committee in February 2023 regarding the Možura case, because the representatives could not agree on who was the government and who was the opposition," the interlocutor recalls.
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