Although the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) is the newly elected head of the Andrijevic parliament Vesko Raketić criticized while he was in the position of vice-president of the municipality in front of the New Serbian Democracy (NSD), accusing him of celebrating the image and work of collaborators of the occupiers, but also of organizing a rally in support of Russian aggression, yesterday they gave him support to become the head of the local assembly.
President of Andrijevic DPS Dejan Ivanovic told "Vijesti" that they decided on that move to give him a chance because in the previous period he criticized the local government led by the president Željko Ćulafić.
After the 2020 elections, Raketić, now in the Vasojević unification movement, was appointed as the vice-president of the municipality as a member of the NSD and held that position until the end of 2022, when he was replaced by the votes of the opposition DPS and the Social Democrats, and the then councilor of the Democrats Bogdan Mijović.
During those two years, the DPS attacked him for "celebrating the image and work of collaborators of the occupier" because he attended the celebration held after the memorial service for the Chetnik leaders Pavlo Đurišić i Dear Draža Mihailović in the village of Gornje Zaostro near Beran, but also that he is the organizer of a "meeting in support of Russian aggression against Ukraine" that was held in front of the local parliament building.
In the press release published by the DPS after the event in Gornji Zaostro, they stated that Raketić "would certainly have been a guest and that the reason was something completely different, because where there is free food and drink, he is also there."
"In these elections, he appeared in front of the citizens' list, he came out with a new program, but we will criticize him again if he continues with the old one," Ivanović said yesterday.
"By voting for Raketić, we want to show that DPS is not always against everything, unlike the parties of the current government at the local level, which, while they were in the opposition, always voted against our party's proposal."
Ivanović, in front of a group of citizens, submitted the initiative for the dismissal of Ćulafić, which was submitted to the board of commissioners in July of this year, and Raketić was one of the signatories of this request.
In the local elections held on June 2, the DPS won 11 mandates, the SNP and Democrats eight, the Europe Now Movement (PES) four, and the "For the Future of Andrijevica" lists (NSD, Democratic People's Party, Prava Montenegro and Free Montenegro) and "For the future of our children" for three mandates each, and the Vasojević unification movement for one.
In order to form a majority, the government parties at the state level needed the support of councilors from one of the two civic lists.
Both entities initially insisted that the first man of Andrijevica and the local assembly should not be from the SNP or the Democrats, but later that demand was softened by proposals for a compromise in the form of rotation or that Ćulafić should not be appointed to the position of president of the Municipality, but someone else from the SNP coalition - Democrats.
However, in the end, an agreement was reached that in the next four years there would be no replacement of the head of the municipality, and that Raketić would be appointed to the position of head of the local parliament, instead of the staff of PES, which is the second strongest list of the newly formed ruling majority.
Three councilors of the Civic Movement "For the Future of Our Children" and one councilor of DPS did not attend yesterday's session.
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