Part of the parties outside the Bar Municipality building, part of the old offices

Some of the opposition parties that participate in the work of the Bar Municipal Assembly (SO) do not have premises for work, although the leadership of that body has a legal obligation to provide them and there is enough space for that. The opposition claims that it is about discrimination and abuse of the power of the coalition in power, and the party I choose Montenegro Radomir Cakan Novaković, she filed a complaint with the Administrative Court against the collegium of the president of the SO Bar Branislav Nenezić.

In the Municipality building, DPS and SD have more than one room, although the Social Democrats have four councilors in the SO, together with Nenezić, and the DPS has 11 councilors. Pozitivna Crna Gora, which does not participate in the work of SO Bar, also has premises in that part of the building. Even the Democratic People's Party with two councilors does not have an office, and the PZP uses the one held by Biram Montenegro. The only opposition parties that have offices are Biram Montenegro and New Serbian Democracy.

Although the Law on the Financing of Political Entities and Election Campaigns stipulates that funds for business premises for the needs of council clubs are provided by the assembly of the local self-government unit, i.e. the body in charge of property affairs, it has not been acted upon since 2022, when the current convocation of the bar assembly was formed. Who will go where after the election, they decided by drawing lots, in which DPS and SD did not participate, and in the end no agreement was reached.

The SO Bar told "Vijesti" that immediately after the constitution of the SO Bar, the decision-making process was initiated on the allocation of business premises, offices for the work of the clubs of councilors represented in the SO.

They, as they claim, made a proposal for a decision that was given to the presidents of all councilor clubs for consideration and familiarization, but due to the disapproval and disapproval of the councilors, the decision-making procedure on the allocation of offices for the work of councilor clubs was repeated, with a public draw at the Collegium of the President of the SO, in the presence of the president of all aldermen's clubs.

"Based on the random selection and the results of the draw, a decision was made, which was forwarded by the Assembly Affairs Service to the competent local self-government bodies for execution immediately after it was made, or rather promptly and without delay," they said.

However, against the adopted decision, a lawsuit was filed with the Administrative Court of the Biram Montenegro political party, which sued the Collegium of the President of the SO.

The SO Bar pointed out that Novaković is also an equal member of that collegium.

"Given the fact that an administrative dispute has been initiated and is still ongoing, the execution of the decision that is the subject of the specific dispute has been postponed until its conclusion", concluded the SO Bar.

In that decision, which "Vijesti" has access to, it is written that the offices will be allocated according to the representation, i.e. the number of councilors, and that priority in the selection will be given to those parties that independently ran for office.

Novaković told "Vijesti" that this is about unequal treatment of opposition parties, and that the ruling coalition wants to "reeducate" them. His party has offices in the Municipality building and he does not want, as he pointed out, to leave them to the governing parties after numerous personal investments.

Rooms are available in the Bar Municipality building, the Communal Activities building and the Bar and A6 building near the municipality, which he considers unacceptable because in that case, whenever the opposition councilors need something, they would have to take a break of half an hour in the sessions in order to they came to their offices for some document.

In the decision of the Collegium, it is written that the business premises intended for the work of councilors' clubs are located in the middle building of the Municipality and in the building of the municipal authority, building number "4" - tower "A", and the total is about 492 square meters, that is, 13 square meters per one councilor, which in in relation to the total number of clubs, it represents a space in which the work of all councilor clubs represented in the SO can be organized.

In the lawsuit, it is written that violations of the procedure can be easily determined from phono records.

"During the voting, there was an omission, because during the voting, the following results were obtained: three members present voted "for", three members present voted "against" and three members present voted "abstain". After that, the president of the SO invited the members who had abstained to vote again, which resulted in the voting schedule that was stated in the minutes itself. However, such a vote cannot be legally valid, because if there were reasons for repeating the vote, the same had to be repeated for all members, not just for some," the lawsuit says.

"Article 47 of the Law on Administrative Procedure, which stipulates that the collegial body decides on administrative matters by a majority vote of all members, was violated. The decision was not made by a majority vote of all members, because not all members voted for the decision, but only those who abstained were invited to vote again, so their votes cannot be counted with the other votes," it concludes.

It is also stated that Nenezić did not explain why the abstainers should repeat the vote. The fact that it is stated in the Decision that primacy will be given to councilor clubs that independently participated in the elections, although this is not prescribed by the Rules of Procedure of the SO.

"With this Decision, two parties, i.e. those two clubs, placed in a privileged position in such a way that they were not the subject of a public lottery, which is completely contrary to positive regulations. It is not allowed to discriminate in this way between political parties, i.e. clubs of councilors represented in the Council of Ministers, especially if on that occasion a privileged position is achieved precisely for the party of which he is a member and whose councilor is the president of the Council of Ministers, which calls into question his impartiality in decision-making and leadership. sessions".

It is also stated that when making this decision, the large funds that the Biram Montenegro party invested in equipping and renovating the offices in the municipal building were not taken into account. They rented the offices themselves, there is no compensation yet.

Member of the Movement Europe now Marko Stoiljkov said that his party does not have the offices that belong to them by law due to the lack of promptness of the services that are responsible for providing them, under the pretext that there is not enough space in the municipal building for all political subjects.

"For the offices, we were offered the option of drawing lots, considering that there are allegedly not enough offices for everyone in the municipal building, which we accepted and received an office by lottery that has not been assigned to us until today," he said.

According to him, PES councilors consider it discriminatory that they were not assigned the offices that belong to them by law and right. Because of this, they were forced to rent the office at their own expense in the amount of 400 euros.

"We filed complaints on several occasions, either directly at the parliamentary sessions, or in writing to the secretary of the municipality, unfortunately without an adequate response," concluded Stoiljkov.

Barska URI won an office in the building of political parties by lot.

"However, certain political entities that used the offices until then filed a complaint and initiated proceedings against the Collegium in order to cancel the allocation of offices according to the number of councilors, as well as the lottery itself. This stopped the process, which is why the Bar URA was forced to rent space for work at another location," she said. Suzana Abazi, technical secretary of OO GP URA.

She added that the offices were offered to them, but they have not been assigned since the beginning of the work of the new convocation of the SO, i.e. in October 2022.

"After the election, the opposition councilors in the local parliament made a proposal that all political parties that have council mandates should divide the space in the building designated for that purpose, by dividing the space into equal parts with partition walls. However, that proposal was not accepted and we have an absurd situation where certain political parties use office space in the Municipality building that is much larger than the number of councilors in the councilor club, while other councilor clubs rent space outside the designated premises", she said.

She reminded that the URA submitted the initiative for providing basic conditions for work on February 13, 2023, four months after the local elections in which their coalition won three mandates.

"In June 2023, we asked a committee question asking for a reaction to the initiative, but we didn't get an answer even then. In November 2023, we submitted a request to the SO for reimbursement of the lease of work premises that we are forced to provide independently. We have not received an answer, eight months after submitting the request", concluded Abazi.

Democrats "on the street" since 2018

From Democratic Montenegro, which has one councilor less than the SD in the SO Bar, they said that it is definitely a question of many years of inappropriate relationship and treatment towards the councilors of that party, who have been "on the street" since 2018, considering to the fact that the municipal administration does not provide them with rooms where they can prepare meetings, print materials, organize meetings and perform their committee function in full capacity.

Since the end of 2018, when they became a parliamentary pariah, until today, the Democrats' councilors do not have their own municipal councilor's offices. During 2018, there were discussions and meetings in which their representatives participated, however, apart from the promise that this problem would be solved soon, and the payment of funds for 2018, they were not officially and formally offered any adequate and decent office that would put them in an equal position with other parties, they pointed out.

"The municipality of Bar, referring to the provisions of the Rules of Procedure of the Bar Municipality Assembly, in which it stipulates that premises are provided 'if possible', and not according to the legal imperative obligation, is trying to evade the Law itself and thereby derogate from it, which is absurd and an incredible legal interpretation", they said. .

According to those legal regulations, the municipal administration paid them funds from July 2018 to December 2018, and during that period they leased premises that were used for the work of councilors. However, they claim, the Municipality suddenly stopped fulfilling its legal obligations at the end of 2018, and from that moment on, they were left to their own devices in terms of leasing or financing the leasing of premises.