Criminal behavior regarding the Municipal Election Commission (MEC) elections best speaks to how a "reformed" DPS (Democratic Party of Socialists) would behave if it returned to power in the country, Đorđe Vujović, the outgoing president of the MEC Budva and former president of the Budva branch of the New Serbian Democracy (NSD), told "Vijesti" today.
"Either the state and the corrupted electoral system in Montenegro will receive a 'slap' from DPS and Nikola Jovanović (President of the Municipality of Budva), or DPS and Jovanović will receive a 'slap' for their illegal actions," said Vujović.
On Friday evening, the Municipal Assembly (MA) of Budva appointed a new five-member MEC with the votes of the councilors of the "Budva our city" list, whose leader in the elections was Jovanović, DPS, the European Union and the Civic Movement URA.
The coalition "For the Future of Budva" contested the appointment because the fifth member was proposed by the Movement for Change (PzP), which has no councilors in parliament.
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"The case of the election of this commission in Budva is not remembered in the parliamentary history of Montenegro. The case of Budva, I ask the citizens to understand this, is much worse than the case in Šavnik, because two incredible precedents occurred that also mean the violation of the law and the Constitution by the DPS and its satellites. Nikola Jovanović, in his new coalition, with the DPS and the SDP, is setting new and unprecedentedly distorted standards in the political life of our country," said Vujović.
He said that Jovanović is aware that the state, primarily the Ministry of Public Administration (MPA), is not reacting to his continuous legal violence and that is why he repeats his illegal actions month after month.
"The case, I can say, of the criminally illegal appointment of the new MEC convocation by the local parliament is proof of what I said, because we have a written position from the State Election Commission (SEC) that clearly states how the composition of the commission is distributed, but Jovanović and DPS completely ignored it in order to manipulate the electoral process. For the past 30 years, we have witnessed incredible and illegal actions by DPS, but what happened a few days ago has no precedent in the past. I want to say it loudly: if Jovanović's violence in Budva passes, then it is a signal that we no longer need elections because the law and legal system do not exist," said Vujović, who was the president of the Budva Municipal Assembly for two years.
He also said that the Government and the MPA have a mechanism to stop the lawlessness being carried out by DPS and Jovanović in Budva.
"They have several legal options to immediately send a signal that the law and regulations must be respected. It is clear that this is a deliberate violation of the law and that it is not a matter of ignorance. Namely, we had the position of the supreme state authority on this issue - the SEC, but the new government decided to trample on the law and practice. And that was not enough for them, so they went a step further. In the end, I have to conclude that if a case is made that an extra-parliamentary party is appointed to the MEC, such as the formally PZP in Budva, and that a composition is appointed contrary to the law, it is an invitation to every other municipality to behave in this way and then there is no longer a regular electoral system. All this tells me that Jovanović seems to want some kind of jamahiriya - a system without elections. It is incredibly hypocritical that, in the national parliament, DPS and SDP claim to be fighting for 'respect for the law' and are obstructing because of it, and then in Budva they are violating the law in the worst way. It is clear, I repeat, how they would behave if they were to seize power at the national level," Vujović told "News".
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