Marković: Democrats' logic - icons are the reason for Lazarević's resignation, 13 victims are not for Bečić and Šaranović's resignations

The President of the Youth Forum of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and representative of the European Union, Jovana Marković, announced today that the logic of Democratic Montenegro is that icons are the reason for the resignation of the Chief of the General Staff of the Army of Montenegro, Brigadier General Zoran Lazarević, but that the 13 victims in Cetinje are not for the resignations of the Deputy Prime Minister for Security, Defense, Fight against Crime and Internal Policy, Aleksa Bečić, and the Minister of Internal Affairs, Danilo Šaranović.

Marković spoke out after Anđela Vojinović, a member of parliament from the Democrats, said yesterday that they learned that Lazarević, during a visit by Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Grlić Radman to the training ship "Jadran", ordered the removal of icons that had been "gifted to the ship by various officials for decades."

"Democrats believe that the Chief of General Staff should be dismissed for removing icons from the Jadran ship, while no one from the security sector should be held accountable for the tragedy in which 13 people died. So, according to them, the icon on the ship is a bigger problem than human lives," Marković stressed in a statement.

She added that the real question is actually - what are icons doing on a military ship anyway?

"Is the ship actually a temple at sea? Are all the soldiers on the ship Orthodox? Has our army become Orthodox too? Maybe the Democrats have forgotten that the army is there to defend the state, not to become a training ground for ideological experiments," Marković points out. He adds that it is clearly more important for them to count icons than to take responsibility for real problems.

"At the same time, their Minister Krapović (Dragan, Minister of Defense) uses official cars for private vacations and publicly insults citizens when they point this out to him. The Democrats boast of honor and 'peace', but leave behind only divisions, chaos and arrogance. If this is 'peace' for them, let them keep it to themselves," said Marković.