Nikolić resigns as President of the Inquiry Committee: "Political training ground for conflict with dissenters"

The head of the parliamentary group of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), Andrija Nikolić, said that he has resigned from his position as president of the Inquiry Committee that deals with attacks on journalists and the activities of the "black threes".

Nikolić assessed that the Inquiry Committee was a political training ground for conflict with dissenters and announced that his party colleague Oskar Huter would also resign from his position in that parliamentary body in the coming days.

He said that the parliamentary majority and the Government are trying to simulate democracy in parliament.

"We will not participate in their simulation, where they refer to the EU, and then override the Constitution with legal solutions. Our MPs have resigned from their parliamentary functions. That is why I am here today. I have resigned as head of the Inquiry Committee," Nikolić said at a press conference in the Parliament.

He said that DPS participated in that committee so that it would not be a court or a prosecutor's office, "and we got political bickering" and attempts to, as he said, harm DPS and its growing ratings.

"The aim was to smear the symbols of the referendum and the entire project through that committee. We should never forget that the largest part of today's parliamentary majority remained loyal to the policies of Slobodan Milošević. You have never heard of these people's willingness to renounce that ideology. With this committee, they tried to smear the biographies of the Seventh Battalion with the biographies of the Seventh Administration. We had one who was visibly nervous reading notes, another who was entertaining the Montenegrin public. The Inquiry Committee was a political training ground for conflict with dissenters," Nikolić assessed.

He believes that the Government has no results and that its promises have not been fulfilled.

"Recently, we have had the legalization of this persecution in the form of two legal solutions that President Milatović returned, and with these solutions the majority wants to attack competitors. If they want to get to the full truth about the tragic events of the 1990s, including the murders, there are institutions of the system. Well, it's not like we control them," asked the DPS MP.

He says that if someone broke the law, they should be held accountable, and that no one from the DPS parliamentary group will oppose that.

"It is no wonder why a huge number of citizens believe that changes have taken place for the worse," he added.

When asked if this was some kind of boycott, adding that they used to say that a boycott had no effect, Nikolić replied that "this is not a boycott", but that abandoning positions is "a message to the ruling majority that the correspondence they had is not valid".

"We will not withdraw from the working bodies. We remain interested in working in parliament," Nikolić said.

"We will use the microphone in parliament for a stronger political campaign," he added.

As he pointed out, the ruling majority continues to talk about how it was during the DPS government, even though that party has not been in power for six years.

"Okay, we've been dismissed. When does your responsibility begin? Someone didn't suddenly remember to question Milo Đukanović. Do you know why now? Because Miloš Medenica appeared on the show the day before," claims the DPS MP.

"Support in Budva is project-based, it is less important which list the Deputy Mayor comes from"

When asked by "Vijesti" how they would comment on the fact that both vice-presidents of the Municipality in Budva come from the "Budva our city" list, he stated that "our support is project-based."

"Whether the vice president will be from this list or that is less important. The people who took over the positions from DPS are already recording results," he added.

Nikolić did not say who would be the vice president of the Plav Municipality.

When asked about the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, whose Council did not elect a director for a full term yesterday, Nikolić said that "there is no DPS to cause them a problem", but they still cannot elect the heads of the institutions.

"They function on the principle - you give me a discount at ASK, I give you a discount at the Central Bank," he added.