The decision to sell the land in the Ulcinj Pine Forest to the Government of Montenegro was withdrawn from the agenda today, as well as the rebalancing of the municipal budget, in order to comply with the necessary legal procedures, explained the first man of Ulcinj, Ljoro Nrekić.
He also claims that it is not true that the Government did not approve the sale of the land, which was claimed by the Ulcinj URA yesterday.
"I didn't want it without consent. I wanted all the councilors to have a complete picture of it. We have assurances that there will be consent by Thursday," said Nrekić, adding that there were "false stories" that the Government refused to give consent.
"No, she did not refuse and those are false stories, the Government did not refuse anything, but an opinion was sought from the Ministry of Agriculture, because the forest is of the third and fifth categories," he pointed out.
The opposition URI are not surprised and say that Nrekić only confirmed that their announced criminal charges have a legal basis.
"The president himself admitted that there are no legal possibilities to consider these decisions. All this shows that this government is not ready to take the Municipality out of the crisis," said Omer Bajraktari from URE.
The citizens' initiative on the protection of the Pine Forest did not come before the councilors either. The reason, according to the authorities, is that it has not yet been discussed by the competent committee.
"An extremely bad image for the work of the Social Security Administration and the people who represent the citizens. This is really disappointing," said Bekim Baša, representative of the citizens.
From the Force, which is part of the government, but also of the opposition URE, they tried to explain to the councilors that the citizens' initiative should be part of the agenda, because the conditions for it have been met.
"Because it has fulfilled all legal obligations towards the Ulcinj City Council and is obliged to be on the agenda at the first session. We have seen that today the majority does not want to hear the voice of the citizens. We are not saying here that we will accept what they said, but we have to discuss about what they are looking for," points out Ardian Mavrić from Force.
They are of the same opinion in the URI, but they believe that the fact that the coalition partners in power do not have the same opinion is actually a political game.
"We haven't had a citizens' initiative for more than ten years. Imagine how the citizens feel now, they don't even put it on the agenda, let alone adopt that citizens' initiative," says Ilir Harasani from URE.
However, the authorities promised that the initiative will definitely be discussed at one of the next sessions.
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