Since June, when the European Commission published the results of the programme Europe for Citizens, the Public Policy Institute has been yet again subjected to an unprecedented campaign of discrediting, run by several NGOs and two media outlets, which have been holding the monopoly over the donation funds in Montenegro, and which have only one objective: eliminate the Institute as competition, especially its competitive work of which has been evaluated as high quality from all the relevant instances.
From the very opening of the Institute in Podgorica, attempts to disable our work in Montenegro at any cost have been present. When we got the first grant from the US Embassy in Podgorica, then later from NATO, some representatives of the NGO sector in Montenegro, who got sudden competition, pressed the donors in all possible ways, in order to disrupt, i.e. practically disable, our operating. After we had got the IPA project, we were the main topic of the daily Vijesti for days. The topic was not the quality of our project and our work, but the fact that someone dared to disturb the order on the former Montenegrin NGO scene, on which the roles had been cast for years and on which who was untouchable was common knowledge and what consequences awaited those who were in their way.
The latest project of the obsolete and uncompetitive organizations, which hide their lack of knowledge and professionalism with attacks, with the aim of preserving the backward environment because they can only manage in such, for fear of opening the market and exposing their uncompetitiveness, is the obscure campaign of one person who, working with her daughter-in-law, daughter and a few stakeholders and manipulated individuals, initiated the campaign against the Institute.
This organized group driven by common interest does not have any arguments which could dispute the quality of the project, but uses false releases, like the one which was established to be false even by the court. The fact that most authors are anonymous, or only registered on paper, the fact that some of them engage in taxi services, or that some were signed without their approval, only reveal the real image of one part of the NGO scene in its real inferior light. What is absurd is the fact that the organizations which started this, which allegedly work on women’s rights, have not made any reference to the topic of the project or the things which could be changed by the project in the sense of women’s positions in Montenegro.
Hence one gains an impression that mentioned “women fighters for human rights” fight actually for as good as possible material and social position of their own.
After these pressure mechanisms did not provide the wanted result, and that is to deprive the Institute of the project which had been assessed as one of the 23 top quality projects on the EU level, the second stage was to engage personal contacts in the media across the region who are always ready to misuse their positions for interest purposes, and so the editor of the Montenegrin desk in Radio Free Europe tried to misuse this regional media with long tradition in professional journalism for political purposes, having released an article that violated all principles of journalistic codes.
Content that was released on the air is available on RFE portal www.slobodnaevropa.org
Even this was not the end. A manager of one of the organizations which is an absolute monopolist over all funds provided by donors that are allocated to Montenegro, after the scandal that she caused through her false accusations and hideous behaviour in her private life, initiates the last attack mechanism - an extremely obscure network of journalists in charge of “the battle against corruption and organized crime” which does not possess either impressum, or contacts, or the address or the head office, but “the journalists” of which use a wide range of unprofessional means when collecting information for their stories which do not represent the public interest in any of their parts but rather means of pressure and control of members of this network.
Finally, the Public Policy Institute is fully prepared to publically release the project which is the subject of the said petition, but also every other ever obtained, for purposes of comparing the quality of our organizations. The Institute is also more than ready to organize every type of public debate on the topics which are the subject of the projects, and to have the representatives of any relevant international institution assess their quality, and not to mask the lack of knowledge and resourcefulness of the previous monopolists by shifting (to another) topic of discrediting and pursuit, planting partner media and organizations like the one you are heading in order to portray alleged concern and create a scandalon international level.
