Page 47 - bnemagazine bne_December 2021_20211203.pdf

bne December 2021 Southeast Europe I 47
More recently, it has drafted a roadmap on the transition to becoming carbon neutral, setting a goal to reduce carbon emissions by 35% by 2030, and adopted the ambitious Europe Now plan, a set of reforms aimed to hike wages and lower taxes for people and companies with lower incomes.
There have also been well published efforts to tackle organised crime, including the seizure of the largest haul of cocaine ever found in the country.
“It’s still early days, of course, but there have been some notable achievements. Though their successes have been relatively modest, they have done well to mitigate against the worst impact of the economic crisis fuelled by the Covid pandemic and in tackling organised crime, evidenced by the seizure of
1.4 tonnes of cocaine near Podgorica and the arrest of the leader of the
Local anti-corruption NGO MANS has many times voiced concerns about the project, claiming it has created room for corruption and lacks transparency, and the project has also run into controversy over its environmental impact on the Unesco-protected Tara river.
The capital investments ministry has also notified prosecutors of several other cases of possible corruption and complained that prosecutors have not taken any action so far.
More controversially, the government has made several efforts to overhaul the judiciary, including efforts to remove chief special prosector Milivoje Katnic, the man who led the investigation
into the 2016 failed coup plot which
led to the sentencing of Democratic Front leaders Andrija Mandic and Milan Knezevic. Their sentences
were later annulled after the change
Vukovic points to the "highly heterogeneous composition” of the ruling coalition, which “clearly is composed of political forces that have diverging priorities. On the issues they can agree they were very pro-active but there are many aspects they cannot agree on completely in a sense of sequence, tradeoffs and substance.”
Multiple disagreements
Over the last year it has become apparent that there are multiple issues on which members of the government and the coalition that installed it disagree, which have stymied efforts at reform in those areas.
“I had high hopes when the new government came in. The Djukanovic government had been there too long, and corruption had become entrenched ... but the only thing that unites the government is their opposition to Milo Djukanovic and I wonder how long they are going to survive. They are only hanging together because they don’t want Djukanovic back,” says Michael Taylor, senior analyst, Eastern Europe, at independent geopolitical analysis and advisory firm Oxford Analytica.
This has been particularly problematic when it comes to the reforms Montenegro needs to complete to become a member of the European Union. While it has long been the frontrunner among the aspiring EU members in the Western Balkans, this autumn its annual enlargement report from the European Commission was highly critical, stating that reforms have been slowed by the political insecurity since the August 2020 general election.
“[T]he reporting period was marked
by tensions and mistrust between political actors. The deep polarisation between the new ruling majority and
the opposition persisted throughout 2020 and intensified in the post-election period. Heated relations and mistrust fed frequent escalations and further exacerbated political divisions, including within the ruling majority,” the latest progress report from the EC notes.
It adds that friction between the executive and legislative powers slowed
“There have also been well published efforts to tackle organised crime, including the seizure of the largest haul of cocaine ever found in the country"
Kavac clan, Slobodan Kascelanmm,” Kenneth Morrison, professor of modern Southeast European history at De Montfort University and author of Montenegro: A Modern History, tells
bne IntelliNews.
Going too far?
The new government has also been delving into suspected corruption under former DPS-led governments, including in connection to the Bar-Boljare motorway construction,
a project that pushed Montenegro’s debt up to the extent that the new government had to appeal to Brussels for help when its first loan repayment to Chinese Exim Bank became due. The capital investment ministry recently revealed that two separate studies by UK consultancies both put the cost
of the project considerably below the €724mn plus €38mn paid so far.
of government. This issue led to one
of the early public confrontations within the new government when the initial legislation put forward by the Democratic Front was toned down by Krivokapic following criticism from the Venice Commission.
“This government did not stay paralysed in absolute terms. They were very active on the domestic front when it came to pursuing their very politically charged agenda, enacting certain laws that
were promised to the Serbian Orthodox Church or to do with some specific governmental acts that would provide for a more retaliatory attitude towards the officials and even bureaucrats that were part of the previous government,” says Sinisa Vukovic, senior lecturer
of conflict management and global policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
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