Public announcement of party recruitment: Grgurović says he only communicated his desire, DPS "washes its hands"

Without a previously published public competition, as required by the Law on Culture, the Social Democrats announced at the election convention in Danilovgrad that the election of their member Milivoj Lakić as the artistic director of the Center for Culture in that city is already a done deal, and announced it on their party's YouTube channel.

"Milivoje (Lakić) is the artistic director of the Culture Center, I have a feeling now, because I believe that it will happen very quickly in the next days, because the agreement has been made, and I am the vice-president of the municipality", said on March 10 the vice-president of the municipality of Danilovgrad from SD Ilija Grgurović.

Milivoje Lakić, who is a member of the SD in the Danilovgrad parliament, currently serves as the editor-in-chief of the program at the Center for Culture.

In Democratic Montenegro, they believe that the DPS-SD coalition government has outdone itself with such transparent party recruitment.

"It is a first-class scandal, not because we all do not know that this is being done, that there is party employment in Montenegro, and especially within the SD, which is known as the party of directors or the party of swindlers, but because they they still started to brag about it. I don't know anything bad about Mr. Milivoj Lakić, moreover, from his biography, from what his education is, I think that maybe he would be good to perform the function of artistic director of the Cultural Center, because he finished directing, but the question arises - why they don't do it in a legal way, why do they have to violate the Constitution and laws at every step", asks Duško Stjepović from the Danilovgrad Democrats.

On the other hand, this is how Grgurović clarifies his publicly stated position.

"It is about my spontaneously expressed wish that a young and professional man with professional and human references, as I personally perceive Mr. Milivoj Lakić, in some future time, perform such a responsible and demanding function. I emphasize that it was my wish, of course, guided exclusively by professional references and expertise and with unreserved respect for all legal norms and regulations," Grgurović said in a written reply to Television Vijesti.

Milivoje Lakić told TV Vijesti in a short telephone conversation that he knew nothing about this and that it was probably Grgurović's wish. However, he did not want to be in front of the camera.

In the meantime, from the office of the President of the Municipality of Danilovgrad, Zorica Kovačević from the DPS, they claim that only qualified and not party personnel are employed in that Municipality.

"The only thing I can say is that Ilija Grgurović's statement regarding the filling of the position of artistic director at the Danilovgrad Center for Culture is subjective, arbitrary and based on nothing, which is more than clear because Mr. Grgurović's hunch regarding the possible filling of the aforementioned position is just a hunch, all the more so if you bear in mind that according to the current Rulebook on the organization and systematization of jobs in this public institution, the position of artistic director is not even systematized," Kovačević said.

Nevertheless, the Democrats claim that the Statute and the Founding Act, in addition to the business function, provide for the possibility of employing an artistic director in that institution, and that the act of systematization should also be adapted to that. The public competition for the unjudged Lakić's place has not yet been announced.