Montenegro welcomes another September 28, the International Day of the Public's Right to Know, ignoring the citizens' right to information, without a valid law, but also respecting international standards, said the deputy executive director of the Center for Democratic Transition (CDT), Milena Gvozdenović.
As she said, the Parliament and the Government still intend to hide information and do not want the state to get an adequate Law on Free Access to Information. This, as he states, is confirmed by the fact that changes to that law have not been on the agenda for a long time, "while for almost more than a decade we have been witnessing numerous failures and inaction in this area".
"And while the government and parliament persistently ignore this now growing problem, citizens, non-governmental organizations and the media remain in the dark, and whether the public will receive any important information from the government depends on the will of individuals. Likewise, institutions can still hide any information they want from the eyes of the public," Gvozdenović says.
He points out that three governments have changed in the previous four years and that each "had a chance to correct the mistakes and inaction of their predecessors in this area, but each of them missed this chance".
Each new government has declaratively advocated for the improvement of the right to free access to information, but in reality this improvement has not occurred, she says.
"Instead of improvement, the authorities continue to behave as if they are not responsible to anyone and arbitrarily publish even the information that the laws stipulate must be public. From all of the above, it is clear that the situation in the field of free access to information in Montenegro is deteriorating, because the stage of stagnation is long behind us," Gvozdenović assessed.
She said that the CDT calls on the Government and Parliament to urgently initiate changes to the Law on Free Access to Information "from a standstill" and end the "disastrous practice" of hiding information from the public.
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