Further escalation also depends on Mandić

The opposition will again prevent the parliamentary session today, which will include the discussion and adoption of this year's budget, but the speaker of parliament Andrije Mandić It depends on whether he decides to remove opposition MPs from the plenary hall for 15 days, which would likely lead to an "expansion of the repertoire" of their extra-institutional activities, according to an interview with "Vijesti" with interlocutors from the government and the opposition.

"I will do everything in my power to resolve the situation in parliament peacefully, but I will not allow anyone to hold the citizens of Montenegro hostage for the interests of the backward structures of the former criminal regime," Mandić said in a statement from yesterday's meeting with the Dutch ambassador to Montenegro. Martijnom Elgersmom.

The Parliament did not respond to "Vijesti" about what Mandić will do regarding the announcement of the renewed blockade of the parliamentary session.

An interlocutor from the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) said that their MPs will behave today as they have done so far, when they prevented several sessions from taking place by standing in front of the chairperson's desk in the plenary hall and making noise, after the Constitutional Committee concluded, and Mandić stated, that the Constitutional Court judge Dragana Đuranović fulfilled the conditions for retirement.

"We are not comfortable with what we are doing either, but the red line must be drawn now, because otherwise much worse things will happen, such as amending the citizenship regulations and the Constitution in the area of ​​identity matters, and that is why we will not give up. The decisions of the Constitutional Committee have already violated the Constitution, and we are absolutely right about that," said the source.

He said that the possible removal of MPs who block the work of the session would most likely lead to an escalation, such as a blockade of the work of all local parliaments and other institutions, and even a traffic blockade, and that this will certainly occur if the Government does not schedule the session of the Budva parliament for February 23, as proposed by the Ministry of Public Administration.

Suffering from DPS-a Danijel Zivkovic He announced two days ago that the work of the Parliament would be prevented until the decision on the retirement of Judge Đuranović was annulled, announcing the possibility of blocking all local parliaments if the state government parties "prevent the formation of a government in Budva."

The opposition claims that the Constitution has been violated because the Parliament, without the mandatory notification of the Constitutional Court, decided in mid-December last year to terminate Dragana Đuranović's judicial function in that court, due to her qualifying for retirement under the Law on Pension and Disability Insurance. They therefore demand that things be restored "to the previous state".

They, however, rejected the idea of ​​the Venice Commission (VC) dealing with the issue, as proposed by the Enlargement Commissioner. Marta Kos during last week's visit to Montenegro, and reiterated by the Head of the EU Delegation Johan Sattler at a meeting with Živković and the Prime Minister Milojko Spajić.

"Vijesti" reported on Sunday that Satler suggested to Spajić and Živković that the Venice Commission (VC) be involved in resolving the political crisis resulting from events related to the Constitutional Court, that is, to examine the decisions that led to the termination of Dragana Đuranović's judicial function.

According to the newspaper, the Prime Minister agreed to Sattler's proposal at a meeting held at the EU Delegation, while the DPS's response was awaited. In the meantime, the DPS rejected it.

According to the parliamentary rules of procedure, Mandić can remove a deputy who disrupts the session from the plenary hall for 15 days, but must first deny him the floor and issue a warning.

Two government sources said they expect the speaker of parliament to remove opposition MPs, but whether that will actually happen and how, only Mandić knows.

One of them said that the budget debate will not begin today because Mandić “has to hand over a written decision on suspension to each MP,” and he cannot know this in advance, because he does not know who will disrupt the work of the parliament. Another interlocutor said that Mandić can write such decisions in advance, just hand them over to the “rioters,” and then the budget debate can take place.

If and when the expulsion occurs, any return of the opposition to the plenary hall while it is in progress would have to be prevented by parliamentary security, with the deployment of additional police officers. However, such a police reaction is only possible at Mandić's request.

According to the rules of procedure, remote MPs must be allowed to attend the vote, which is a new opportunity for them to try to disrupt the work of parliament. One of the interlocutors from the government said that he also expects DPS MPs to activate smoke bombs, tear cables and thus prevent electronic voting. Another interlocutor said that in that case, voting could also be done by raising hands, regardless of the noise that opposition MPs would make during the vote.

The interlocutor from the DPS, however, said that they are decent people and not some "showmen" and that they will not engage in "cutting cables" and similar things, and that they only expect their demands, which are not political, but completely legally based, to be realized, because they are not asking for elections, a transitional government, and the like. "We are only asking for a fair agreement on our demands."

"Spajić has a structural error in power, and these are Mandić and his team, who are doing things like the resolution on Jasenovac, various identity demands, which are deliberately hindering our European path. The latest example is the amendment that allows the Serbian Orthodox Church to be the owner of village cemeteries," said a source from the top of the DPS.

Mandic is yesterday He said that the blockade of parliament was not initiated due to any situation in the Constitutional Court, but rather due to "the courageous fight against organized crime embodied in the arrest of numerous high-ranking officials of the former regime who had ties to criminal structures or various corruption scandals."

"We are going to vote on the budget in good faith. As for the announced obstruction of the session, we hope that this will not happen, especially considering the initiative of our European partners to overcome the situation regarding the US. If this does happen, the bodies of the Assembly will act in accordance with the Constitution, laws and the Rules of Procedure," said a source from the top of the Prime Minister's Europe Now Movement.

Spajić said yesterday that he was asking the opposition to stop blocking processes important for all citizens of Montenegro.

"By rejecting the European Union's (EU) proposal to consult the Venice Commission and boycotting Commissioner (Marta) Kos's address to the Montenegrin parliament, the opposition is not contributing to accelerating Montenegro's European path. On the contrary. We want an opposition that will be part of the country's European agenda and we regret that we are not seeing that now," Spajić wrote on the X network.

He also said that they accept that domestic courts resolve their dilemma about the constitutionality of the termination of Dragana Đuranović's mandate.

"On the other hand, the budget must be adopted for the sake of higher incomes, investments, European integration, development, and not for the sake of the government. Once again, I ask the opposition to stop blocking processes important for all citizens of Montenegro," said Spajić.

Đukanović: Only citizens will be "suspended" due to the blockade

The blockade of parliament is not carried out for the sake of some order in the state or legal order, but primarily for political points or possible elections, which may be profitable for parties in some respects, but absolutely not for the stabilization of conditions and the functionality of democracy, assessed an assistant professor at the University of "Donja Gorica". Nikoleta Djukanovic, answering questions from “News”.

"(That) is an absolutely legitimate way of expressing one's position. However, I am not sure that there is justification for such great dissatisfaction, because all political actors sitting in parliament today have done the same or similar things," Đukanović assessed.

She said that today we do not have a single political party in parliament that has never held power. "That means that they are all responsible, some more, some less, but I think they are all responsible for the situation they have brought the citizens into. I do not believe that any party has ever done anything significant to prevent this situation from happening."

Đukanović emphasized that the opposition must have access to all the means of their opposition activities and that this way of expressing dissatisfaction is completely legitimate for the reasons they have explained, but that she does not think that this is something that can really lead to a way out of the crisis.

"I think the damage was done much earlier and during previous governments and parliamentary majorities. Those political parties paved the way for us to have courts that are not depoliticized, impartial, including the Constitutional Court, and on the other hand, what is worst - that citizens will gain nothing from this situation," Đukanović assessed.

She said that instead of political actors seeing why this happened and improving legal solutions regarding the conditions for the termination of judges' mandates, so that such things would not happen again and so that the laws were not so unclear that they could cause so many legal disputes, political parties view the situation of judges' retirement as something that could bring them or take away some political points.