The Vice-President of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) Ivan Vuković announced that, if the Government does not withdraw the planned changes to the criteria for acquiring Montenegrin citizenship, that party will leave the Parliamentary Committee for the Reform of Electoral Legislation and submit an initiative to the Constitutional Court for the evaluation of the constitutionality of those changes.
"We see this as an attack on Montenegro, this is a betrayal of state interests, and we will fight for Montenegro with all means," Vuković said in a guest appearance on Radio and Television of Montenegro.
He said that the Government's plan to change the criteria for acquiring Montenegrin citizenship is very dangerous for Montenegro, and that in 2006, the Prime Minister of Serbia, Vojislav Koštunica, tried to do the same thing, when he demanded that citizens of Serbia, originally from Serbia, vote in the referendum on independence. Montenegro.
Vuković, as reported by Portal RTCG, said that the Government's initiative would lead to about 40 thousand of our citizens in the diaspora losing their right to vote, while about 35 thousand newcomers from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Russia would be registered in the register of citizens.
"What the Minister of the Interior is talking about, that it is in the interest of the country as a whole, I agree, but he did not say which country. This is definitely not in the interest of Montenegro and this is the same thing that the then Prime Minister of Serbia, Vojislav, tried to do before the referendum on independence. Koštunica, trying to win the right to vote in the referendum for the 260 people who lived in Serbia and were originally from Montenegro," Vuković said.
He told the Government to, as he says, come to their senses and abandon those changes.
"This is a very dangerous matter for the interests of the state of Montenegro, a prime example of political and identity engineering, and we will act accordingly to this situation," said Vuković.
He reminded that until now, all possible changes to the electoral legislation were within the competence of the parliament and that these laws were considered by the Committee for the Reform of the Electoral Legislation.
"The government is brutally violating its political and legal obligations and is hiding under the radar, while misleading the Montenegrin public with the situation surrounding Minister Leposavic, trying to do something that could have very serious consequences for the stability of Montenegro," Vuković said.
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