Protest by residents of Kovren, Gorice and surrounding villages: "Smolović is not our president, he is cheating, he is dividing the people..."

Residents of Kovren, Gorica and surrounding villages have said that the president of the Municipality of Bijelo Polje, Petar Smolović, is not their president, because he is deceiving and dividing the people, just because he does not have votes in Vraneš.

They made this announcement today at a demonstration protest in the town of Gorice, outraged that Smolović will not sign a contract with the Ministry of Public Works for the construction of two road routes, Tomaševo - Sokolac and Kovren - Gorice, worth one million and seventy thousand euros.

Smolović previously told "Vijesti" that there was no obstruction and that it was not true that no investments were made in Vranes, but that those funds should be distributed among several villages and not towards the houses of "two weekenders".

Lawyer Miodrag Joksimović said that Smolović persistently repeats the same story "about two weekenders who want a road to their weekend homes", forgetting that 47 households live in the stretch from Kovren to Gorice throughout the year, pointing out that Smolović is not their president not because he is a member of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), but because he does not tell the truth and is not human, that he invents and deceives.

"It simply seems that we are not residents of that municipality and that we have no right to anything. For 60 years, thousands of cubic meters of the highest quality pine lumber have been exported from this area. Just three years ago, 350.000 euros worth of wood was exported from here, and 70 percent of that goes to the budget of the Bijelo Polje Municipality, and we have no benefit. If the concessionaires had not built this road last year, we would not have been able to get to our houses, and they did thanks to our persistence, road blockades and threats that we would not allow them to export the lumber," said Joksimović.

He explained that "the problem is that the Mayor of the Municipality did not request funds for asphalting a single square meter in the Vraneška Valley through the 2025 budget of Montenegro, and in several places he and Milun Varagić, the president of the Local Municipality Council, whose mandate expired three years ago, have stated that they do not want to asphalt the roads that Andrija Mandić is allegedly asphalting, even where they do not have votes."

"This means that it is our fault that we do not want to vote for a certain policy. Should we return to a one-party system and think and vote as determined by the mind of one incompetent man?" Joksimović asked.

He pointed out that this road route was not left to anyone's mercy, but rather, two or three years ago, during a visit to Vraneš, MPs from Podgorica, thanks to Rat Vuković who presented the problems to them, promised that, if they ever come to power, this village would be a priority, to be improved so that it could function.

"The proposal was sent to the Budget Committee and voted on, and entered the regular procedure and was adopted as a legal provision in the budget. The budget is passed by law of the Parliament of the Republic of Montenegro, it can only be changed by law through a rebalance, no mayor, regardless of which municipality it is and who is in power, can change it and this is a mandatory item that must be implemented," he said.

Commenting on the fact that several people have appeared who are now opposing the construction even though the road passes 20 meters from the houses, Joksimović said that they are the sons of one of the locals, who are demanding that the funds be distributed to Vegaševići, Stožer, Bliškovo and other places.

Momčilo Kojović said that it is an unprecedented case that citizens whose houses the road passes are opposing the construction because Smolović is manipulating everyone, even though they know that this budget item cannot be changed, as the president recently proposed, to divide these routes into 12 locations, each one kilometer long.

He noted that the road will end with or without Smolović, because the people in Podgorica, including him, have invested a lot of effort, knocking on the doors of all institutions so that the decision-makers accept the proposal to, after decades of destruction, bring the catastrophic condition of the roads in Vraneš into order.

"If the Mayor does not do this through the institutions he controls, there is a real danger that we will enter October and November and be a little late because of them. That is why I am asking our neighbors, my relatives, to finally understand once and for all that the Mayor is manipulating them and playing dirty. The money that was received on that budget item can only be spent there or wasted. The second problem is that next year, the Municipality of Bijelo Polje has a realization on that budget item - zero, and next year no one will get anything, and this year we have been pushing this road, squatting at the gatehouses, begging at the parliamentary clubs, 12 kilometers for Vraneška dolina and an additional three kilometers for Grab, which will be done by the Ministry of Agriculture. I guarantee that if representatives of local communities organize, if our community realizes that it has been manipulated, that next year we will force Smolović to ask for at least five kilometers. There is money for roads, a new Ministry for the Development of the North has been formed, so next year you are asking for ten kilometers of roads, and we, and I as an engineer, guarantee that another ten kilometers will be added to that," concluded Kojović.

He noted that by delaying, they will lose time to react and win next year, emphasizing that in Vraneš not a single serious road has been built in 29 years, and that the last one built was the Tomaševo-Lijeska road in 1996, when Veljo Radojević was the mayor.

"Since then, there has always been this issue, but roads in some other local communities were asphalted and no one asked for it to be shared fairly. The fact that Smolović created this circus is very programmed, corrupt, and has divided us. We understand the president of the local community Vergašević, they are really in danger and they don't even have a paved road, but I haven't managed to explain that he can't do it with this money, it's not legally possible," said Kojović, promising that they will fight together to solve the problem of Vergašević, Kičava and other routes next year.