Protest of Tivat residents: Abolish "Sea Evil", return maritime rights to citizens

In the way it treats local communities on the coast, the Public Company Morsko dobro from Budva is the main destroyer of the authentic coastal way of life, and the residents of coastal municipalities and their political representatives will no longer tolerate this.

This is the main message from the protest rally "We will not give up Belane" which was held this afternoon in the southern part of this popular beach where generations of Tivat residents grew up and swam, and local boaters, fishermen and sailors have used the pebble beach for their activities for decades.

The gathering, organized by an informal group of Tivat citizens, brought together several hundred people, who were joined, as a sign of support, by some tourists - visitors who have been coming to Tivat for years, attracted precisely by the authentic ambiance and traditional way of life of the locals who rely on the sea. In the shade of the sails, several sailboats pulled ashore, with music from loudspeakers and a treat prepared for them by the humanitarian organization Caritas of the Kotor Diocese, which also used this gathering to collect voluntary contributions from citizens for the treatment of a seriously ill young man from Tivat. Divers from two Tivat diving clubs organized a clean-up of the seabed in front of that part of Belane beach, and members of the sailing clubs "Delfin" and "Krtoli", representatives of the local non-governmental sector, and civic and environmental activists also participated in creating a "pumping" mood at the protest. "Both old and young" gathered at Belani, as well as councilors or representatives of almost all Tivat political parties, with the exception of representatives of New Serbian Democracy, whose staff, by the way, run the Public Company Morsko dobro and the Ministry of Spatial Planning and Urbanism, which adopts plans for beaches and temporary facilities on the shores of all coastal municipalities, most often not taking into account the objections and requests it receives in this regard from municipalities and local communities.

From the protest (video: Siniša Luković)

The president of the Nova Tivat Municipal Council and the president of the Tivat Municipal Assembly, Miljan Marković, was also the only high-ranking local government official in that city today who did not stand by his fellow citizens, gathered in protest at Belani.

In the latest tender for leasing beaches, Morsko dobro leased the southern part of Belan, which had been a free, public beach with no tenant until the end of 2028, to the Podgorica construction company “Civil Engineer”. This part of the Tivat coast, by the way, is recognized and defined in the planning documentation as a “sports and entertainment zone”, which was also insisted on by the Municipality of Tivat, however, Morsko dobro still decided to turn it into a classic beach where the tenant can set up and charge for beach furniture. This infuriated the people of Tivat, but also strained the patience of the local administration of that city.

The Mayor of Tivat, Željko Komnenović, was supposed to participate in the protest rally, but he had to cancel at the last minute due to an invitation to attend the Government session, which was urgently held in Podgorica tonight due to the crisis with the concession process, as a member of the Tender Commission for the airport concession.

When the municipal spokesperson Branka Čelanović informed them that the mayor was not there, the crowd initially reacted with whistles and disapproval, but as her reading of Komnenović's written address to his fellow citizens progressed, the protest participants increasingly approved and applauded the mayor's messages.

"The time has come to tell some facts and truths about the functioning of the JP Morsko dobro, or as the people of Boka and most coastal residents call it - Morsko zlo. After the democratic changes in 2020, we thought that things would change regarding the functioning of this, in many ways, controversial state-owned enterprise. Despite our expectations, from those forces on the political scene that seem to advocate for replacements, not changes, we received a rigid and non-transparent form of spatial management, which, according to the Constitution of Montenegro, laws and the European Charter of Local Self-Government, is the exclusive competence of municipalities," Komnenović told them, adding that because of this, the leaders of all six coastal municipalities agreed that Morsko dobro "in this form, in order to defend the public interest, must be abolished and transformed into a regulatory agency, and the management of our coastal area must be returned to the municipalities."

"Instead of cooperating for the general benefit of citizens, the management of this company, after justified criticism of the Program of temporary facilities in the coastal zone and undeveloped beaches, without tenants, with which we entered this tourist season, began an aggressive political campaign and smearing municipalities, primarily the Municipality of Tivat. The relationship of the Coastal Zone towards Tivat, from which it annually generates around 1,7 million euros, is best illustrated by the fact that since 2018, the Coastal Zone has invested only 250.000 euros in our municipality for the project of building a coastal promenade on this very beach, with significant delays and excuses. At the same time, the Municipality of Tivat invested over 700.000 euros in this project. How is it possible that the Coastal Zone can lease one of the few public beaches in Tivat to the Civil Engineer company from Podgorica, which ruined this very project as a supervisor," Komnenović wondered, adding that the Municipality asked the Coastal Zone to set aside part of the beach for water sports, and part for a family swimming pool, "and yet they commercialized Belane beach in addition to that."

He pointed out that this is just the latest in a series of examples in which Morsko dobro acted against the interests of Tivat and its citizens and allowed its business partners to devastate the local environment or monopolize public city infrastructure. He pointed out that the people of Tivat are now fighting to maintain the public character and not lease the southern part of Belan to anyone, in the same way that they successfully fought a few years ago to preserve the largest and most popular beach there - Ponta Seljanova beach.

"How is it possible that the partner of the Seaside Park is a private company from Tivat - 'Corleone', to which they leased a parking lot on Seljanova in a controversial, in my opinion illegal manner? It was to this tenant of the Seaside Park that we sewed the illegal wall around Waikiki Beach two years ago, and he still seems to be a reliable partner of the Seaside Park and a tenant of the coast. How is it possible that one of the beaches on which the same Seaside Park used to place the Blue Flag, Kalardovo Beach, is completely devastated by concrete walls, without the Seaside Park terminating the contract with the tenant? There are many questions, but there is only one answer. Tivat, like all other municipalities, is demanding that the Seaside Park be abolished and the Seaside Park be returned to the citizens," concluded Komnenović, saying that "this will be the first in a series of protest gatherings of citizens against the Seaside Park and the Municipality of Tivat will once again support justice and truth, and not Budva's schemes and combinations."

"If someone had told us on the night of August 30, 2020, when those historic changes took place, that we would be here today and protest against the Coastal Good, I would have told them they were crazy. It seems, however, that for some people with whom we fought for change at the time, the Coastal Good, which we then colloquially called the Sea Evil, became good, but for us it remained evil," said the Vice President of the Municipality of Tivat Jovan Brinić, emphasizing that the large presence of citizens and the atmosphere at the protest confirms "that they can try with paperwork, politics and procedures, but essentially no one can succeed against the people."

Those present were addressed by Radovan Novaković and Jovica Petković on behalf of the group of citizens who organized the protest, as well as local parliamentarians Dubravka Nikčević (DPS), Tonći Janović (PES) and Vatroslav Belan (LP), as well as the president of the Lastva Local Community and the head of the Tivat Boka Navy's board Marjan Ribica - all as citizens, not politicians, which they particularly insisted on. Their common message is that Belane beach must belong to locals and tourists, not to a tenant, whoever that may be.

"I came here today to protest as a local resident that an institution even thought of putting this area up for public tender. How is that even possible? It seems to me that we all share the feeling that little by little, we will no longer be able to approach this beautiful sea and our beautiful Tivat coast. I think that we, the locals and citizens, did not deserve this at all, but it is good that we protest if necessary again next week and I don't know how many more times it will take to achieve our common goal," Nikčević pointed out, adding that everything that is happening with the Coastal Zone should be a lesson to politicians in local communities on the coast "to act preventively, and not to have to repair the damage that is already happening and is already present."

Tonći Janović emphasized that the protest in Belane was defending principles, "and the principle is that Belane beach was designated as a public swimming area."

"The fact that someone remembered to redraw the plans a month ago and draw a beach here for lease through a tender is another problem. I am glad that citizens have gathered in such large numbers to defend their rights, and as a member of the Parliament of Montenegro, I will insist that the proposal for a new Law on Maritime Domain and Coastal Management be included on the agenda of the first upcoming session of parliament, because this will be a condition for discussing a set of other very important laws that also concern our path to the EU. These laws are important for Montenegro and the EU, but this law is also very important for Tivat and all coastal cities," said Janović.

The proposal for a new law that abolishes the existing Public Company for Coastal Development and returns coastal management to coastal municipalities under the supervision of a special state agency was prepared by a working group of the Union of Municipalities of Montenegro. All coastal municipalities have supported it, but the President of the Parliament of Montenegro, Andrija Mandić (Nova), has so far kept the law in a drawer and avoided putting it up for debate and voting at the plenary session.

Vatroslav Belan said that coastal residents have fewer and fewer places where they can pull a boat out of the sea, cast a net, lower sailboats, repair fishing nets... because the coast is being completely commercialized and beaches are being standardized with beach furniture and a more or less identical offer.

"However, we all have to understand together, the state has to understand, the local government has to understand that a tourist destination is made up of its way of life - what is our authenticity, our tradition, our culture. Unfortunately, because of this approach, we are less and less seafarers, and more and more just coastal people who just live by the sea, but less and less live from the sea. Then when they take away the last pieces of coast and sea like this one here, the question arises, what are we then, what do we become? We should not demand that they leave us only this piece of land - there should be many more of these pieces of land, because the tourists who come want to see how we live with the sea - what means pulling out a boat, what means teaching a child to swim, what means repairing a fishing net or mending a net. That is the economy and that is tradition. And we defend that - we defend centuries of authentic life in these areas that tourists need to see and experience. If we sell it and destroy it, what can we do then - it is completely the same because we can commercialize everything and make everything one sterile, a uniform offer with the first deckchair in Lepetane and the last in Krtole. So what – are we then Tivat residents, are we Boka residents, are we Mediterranean and do we even live on the Adriatic – no! Well, that's what we are defending here today," concluded Belan.

Although invited, representatives of the Coastal Zone Authority, led by director Mladen Mikijelj, did not come to the protest, and dissatisfied citizens said that if the commercialization of Belan is not abandoned, they will continue with protest gatherings and probably block traffic on the Adriatic Highway.