The New Serbian Democracy (NSD) and Democratic Montenegro (Democrates) agreed yesterday on a plan to rotate their representatives in top positions in the Beran government, which was supposed to happen three weeks ago.
This was confirmed by the Vice President of the Berane Municipality, Damjan Ćulafić (Democrats), to the "News".
According to the coalition agreement on government in that municipality, agreed in May 2022, Ćulafić should become the head of Beran and succeed Vuk Todorović (NSD) in that position. Although, according to Ćulafić, the rotation was supposed to take place on May 7, the plan was agreed upon yesterday, and it also includes replacements in some other positions.
Ćulafić said that the first step will be for Todorović to resign from his position, and after that, the President of the Municipal Assembly (SO) from the Democrats, Milun Rmuš. Then, he clarified, the president of the SO from the NSD will be elected, and then the head of the Municipality from the Democrats.
The interlocutor reminds that two years ago these parties agreed in principle to rotate the positions of the president and vice president of the municipality, but that the NSD, i.e. the former Democratic Front (DF) in the meantime demanded new negotiations, so that it would not happen that the Democrats simultaneously cover the functions of the president of the municipality and SO. Ćulafić states that his party accepted it.
"We understood that and made some kind of concession. If the agreement is completed, NSD will have the president of the Municipal Council in the next two years, and the Democrats will have the president of the municipality," he said.
Ćulafić says that this is the final agreement, which was preceded by several weeks of talks.
"I believe that the time has come to inform the public about everything, given that in the past few weeks, not wanting to burden the talks with coalition partners, the media and the public, I refused to answer several times," he said.
The ruling majority in Berane consists of the parties of the former DF, the Democrats, the "Berane Sad" Movement, Prava Montenegro and United Montenegro. In opposition are the Socialist People's Party (SNP) and the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS).
On Thursday, the Democrats held a session of the Main Board, after which they announced that they expect all coalition partners in Berane to, in accordance with the coalition agreement, immediately proceed with the implementation of the agreement on rotation in the middle of the mandate and the election of Ćulafić to the post of Municipality President.
They reminded that their party at the beginning of 2019, "although in a period of very strained relations between the local committees of the Democrats and the then DF", promptly and without delay implemented a rotation in Budva between Dragan Krapović and Marko Bata Carević.
"... Because the given word and signed signature must always be the guiding star", they assessed.
There have been several examples of failed rotations on the Montenegrin political scene, and the freshest is the recent one from Ulcinj.
In June, the URA civil movement (GP) in that municipality was supposed to hand over the position of the first man to Forca, and take over the position of head of the parliament, but that did not happen. Instead, GP URA made an agreement with the opposition Democratic Union of Albanians (DUA) on the entry of that party into power. However, that agreement failed, because a new parliamentary majority was created (consisting of Forca, the Democratic Party, DPS, the Democratic Alliance in Montenegro, the Social Democrats, the Social Democratic Party and the Bosniak Party), so the URA GP will move to the opposition.
There were also problems with rotation in Andrijevica, in the fall of 2022, when the president and then vice president of that municipality, Željko Ćulafić and Veselin Raketić, clashed over whether they should switch positions. Ćulafić claimed that no such coalition agreement was signed, accusing Raketić of illegal behavior and disobeying the president's decisions. Raketić, on the other hand, claimed that it was an attack on the coalition agreement. He was removed from office at the end of 2022.
DPS is asking for early elections, the government claims that there is no crisis
Sessions of the Beran parliament have been postponed and interrupted several times in the past month and a half due to lack of quorum, i.e. non-attendance of a part of the government councilors at the sessions.
However, in unofficial conversations with the "Vijesti" journalist, the governing party committees there claimed that there is no crisis of power, and that, due to obligations, various councilors were absent on different occasions.
The Beran DPS committee announced at the beginning of April that it has become a practice that for each session of the local parliament there must be several attempts, "until the constituents of the majority among themselves remember why the citizens elected them", saying that extraordinary local elections "are the only right solution for this situation".
"From session to session, the parliamentary majority in SO Berane reveals its true face more and more clearly. The family, which was put together, doesn't even know how, but it knows why - exclusively for the sake of personal and party interests. It's not that they don't care about the interests of the citizens and the general interest of this city, but it's not even in the remotest of their thoughts," the DPS said at the time.
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