Eurasia Press & News
After documents were leaked from Montenegro’s ruling party, revealing plans to hire political loyalists, the opposition is demanding action.The opposition daily newspaper Dan on Tuesday has published a letter which it calls proof of the growing politicisation of Montenegro’s public administration.
In a letter sent to Dejan Zarubica, president of the then municipal board of the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS in Niksic, Branka Bogetic, head of the post office in the town, asked his consent to hire three persons in 2006.
The document is the latest leak pointing to plans to give advantages to DPS supporters when it comes to jobs in the public sector.
The affair broke out on Friday when Dan published the first transcript from a session of the party’s council concerning the election campaign in June 2012.
Zoran Jelic, a speaker at the session and then director of Montenegro’s Employment Bureau, talked about the bureau’s projects to employ young educated people.
“Through these projects, we will mainly employ DPS members. We have daily contacts with the presidents of the boards of the DPS in all municipalities, because we want primarily to employ our own people,” Jelic said.
The minutes from the DPS sessions were uploaded on the website of Dan and the affair continued throughout the weekend.
Although those involved denied any wrongdoing in their speeches, the opposition was prompt to react on Monday, urging the courts to prosecute the case.
In the the absence of such a reaction, they did not exclude the possibility of boycotting the upcoming presidential election.
Ranka Carapic, supreme state prosecutor, however, said the minutes from the DPS session didn’t point to any criminal act pursuant to the law on party financing.
“In their statements, none of the participants committed any offence prescribed by the law,” she said on Tuesday.
