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Monitoring of the financing of political parties



About the project

The Monitoring Center CEMI, in cooperation with the Foundation Open Society Institute Montenegro and with the financial and expert support of the Open Society Justice Initiative - Budapest is implementing a project named "Monitoring of the financing of the political parties in Montenegro".

Before this project has started, also with the support of FOSI ROM, CEMI has implemented a project, which was consisted of the analyses of the situation in Montenegro, related to the financing of the political parties and potential cases of corruption. Analyses were finished in May 2004 and gave a realistic overview of the situation in this area after the Law on financing the political parties was adopted and before its implementation started.

It is worth mentioning again that CEMI proposed this Law, with the support of FOSI, USAID, USAID/ORT and NPA.

In order to get a full picture in this sphere it is not enough to monitor only the implementation of the Law on financing the political parties, but it is also necessary to compare the data which you get through mechanisms that are available through 2 other Laws: Law on conflict of interest and the Law on public procurement.

Aim of the project

The aim of this project is the decrease of corruption within political parties through increase of the level of transparency in their financing.

Objectives
  1. Raising awareness of the public about the ways political parties receive and spend their financial resources.
  2. Comparing data from the official reports of the political parties with the real data which we would get through our monitoring.
  3. Analyses of implementation of the positive Laws and provisions and lobbying for their changes.
In the first year of implementation of this program, special attention will be dedicated to creation of data base of public documents, through which it will be possible to compare the data with the official reports of political parties related to their financing and find potential abuses.

There is no public data base in Montenegro related to data concerning contracts made according to provisions regulated with the Law on public procurement, which regulate the property and income of Governmental representatives and political parties, including their membership in other governing boards. This project and the data base as one of its key products is the main factor that would change the inaccessibility of this information to broader circle of people and public in general.

Through creating this base, with a strong search engine that would be easily accessible to public on CEMI's web site, journalists and all interested people would be able to make researches on their own, base don valid data.

This way, level of transparency will be highly increased and this would lead to creation of conditions for a more active role of all citizens to join the process of identification of potential corruption in Montenegro.

This data base should include continuous and fresh data from several areas:
  1. Income and spending of financial resources of political parties in their regular and exceptional financing of pre-election campaigns;
  2. Data about contracts made by the Government, local authorities and public companies with other persons/private companies;
  3. Data about incomes, property and memberships in governing boards of all delegates and representatives of local and state authorities;
  4. Analyses of media monitoring on media reporting about issues from this project;
  5. Creating a base of newspaper articles on the internet presentation, available for searching.
CEMI has planned to work on this data base until the half of next year, when it will be disclosed to public.

Monitoring of the financing of political parties in Montenegro

Within this project, CEMI has made adequate preparations for the monitoring of the financing of political parties, which was adopted by the National Parliament in March whose implementation started on 1st of October.

CEMI has created a case study for this monitoring, which shows the current situation analyses of Montenegrin electoral system, current control of the financing of political parties, situation in the sphere of corruption and anti corruption initiatives, conflict of interest, as well as other questions related to these topics.

Foundation Open Society Institute-Montenegro has prepared a manual that contains the methodology for monitoring the financing of political parties, which CEMI will use in the next phase as a base for monitoring of the financing of political parties in Montenegro.

The aim of this monitoring is creation of a data base that would contain informations related to spendings of financial resources by political parties, as well as continuous comparing of data given by the parties in their reports, which they are obliged to by the new Law, with the real data, which CEMI will get during the process of monitoring. This data base will be regularly updated and available to all interested persons on CEMI's web site, at a specific link.

Monitoring of conflict of interest

Within this same project, CEMI has made a research about the level of availability of information related to the work of public officials and members of state institutions and institutions of local municipalities. This research will help the creation of data base, as one part of data base is related to the conflict of interest of public officials. By using the web presentations of main state institutions, as well as information CEMI has received from state and local institutions on demand, CEMI has managed to create the list of public officials in Montenegro that will be added to the data base. This way, the public will be able to gain direct access to all public information, what makes other types of researches and comparisons much easier to do and disclose.

CEMI's working team in this project has visited a Slovakian NGO "Alliancia Fair-Play", which is working on monitoring of anti corruption activities related to financing of political parties and conflict of interest of public officials in Slovakia. The aim of the visit was exchange of experience and establishing cooperation with this organization, which has offered CEMi their expert and technical support in the realization of this project in Montenegro.

CEMI has also made a working version of comparative analyses related to conflict of interest, whose goal is finding new legal solutions in order to improve the existing Montenegrin Law on conflict of interest.

CEMI has also planned to establish the cooperation with the state Commission for prevention of conflict of interest in the next period.

Monitoring of public procurement

One part of the research that CEMI has made within the project "Monitoring of the financing of political parties" is related to giving its marks to the level of availability of data related to the disclosure of public procurement of state institutions, which use public resources and disclose tenders, all tenders disclosed by these institutions (with detailed data about the contracted tender and its documentation), all companies that participated in tenders, as well as those that signed an agreement on tenders (with detailed information about these companies).

Information, which CEMI has come up with through web presentations of the Central register of Economic court and national Commission for public procurement, as well as demands sent to these institutions for reviewing documentation of disclosed tenders will be a part of this data base.

 
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