The non-governmental (NGO) sector was recognized as a partner in the exposés of the mandate holders, but in practice it was ignored or labeled as an enemy, according to the Center for Civic Education (CGO).
Nikola Obradović, program assistant at CGO, said that the NGO sector was marginally represented in the expositions of the three mandate holders from 2020, Zdravko Krivokapić, Dritan Abazović and Milojko Spajić.
"Thus, 1,25 percent of the space in Krivokapić's exposition was dedicated to the NGO sector, 2,65 percent in Abazović's and 1,5 percent in Spajić's," the announcement states.
Obradović said that all three exposés have one thing in common and that in those few sentences they generally emphasized that the Government will nurture partnership with NGOs, although no progress has been recorded.
"The government of Krivokapić did not establish significant cooperation with the NGO sector, nor did it contribute to the improvement of the conditions for the work of the NGO sector," the statement said.
According to Obradović, during her mandate there was a marked decline in the financing of NGO projects.
He stated that many ministries did not even implement regular competitions and that problems were also identified in the NGO registration procedures, which were extremely long at the time.
"The promised transparency only related to access to information from the work of the previous government, but not the one it led, which limited the work of NGOs as the controller of that government," the statement said.
Obradović said that Abazović's exposé, compared to the other two mandate holders, devotes the most space to the NGO sector.
"The Abazović government promised the most to the NGO sector, but also failed the most, positioning itself hostilely against the critically oriented NGO sector," the announcement says.
Abazović and the ministers most loyal to him were at the forefront of this, as they led open conflicts with some of the most influential and credible NGOs.
"The level of intensity of some of the attacks led by that government against NGOs, either directly or through close actors, was noticed by the wider domestic and international public, which reacted on several occasions because of it," Obradović said.
He said that the announced qualitative change in relation to the NGO sector, but also the implementation of the announced measures to improve the conditions for its work, was missing.
"Including the fact that the new Law on Non-Governmental Organizations has not been implemented either, which was also an obligation that the Government set itself through the European Union Accession Program," Obradović added.
In Spajić's exposé, as he said, the NGO sector is addressed very generally.
Obradović said that the Spajić government is still in the phase of assessing its relationship with the NGO sector.
"However, it should be noted that in the first two and a half months of work, Spajić did not initiate any thematic meeting with the NGO sector, if we exclude ad hoc invitations to meetings about the census, which included a wider circle of actors," stated Obradović.
The review of the documents was made through the CGE program supported by the Core grant regional project SMART Balkan - Civil Society for a Connected Western Balkans.
The project is implemented by the Center for the Promotion of Civil Society (CPCD), the Center for Research and Public Policy (CRPM) and the Institute for Democracy and Mediation (IDM), and is financially supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway.
"The content of the text is the sole responsibility of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of CPCD, CRPM, IDM and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway," the statement added.
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