Regarding the report that TV Vijesti broadcast yesterday about the candidates for president and members of the Central Election Commission, who provided incorrect or contradictory information about themselves in their statements before the parliamentary election commission, some of those mentioned reacted.
Boris Bastijančić clarifies the part related to his involvement in the DPS commission, emphasizing that he was there exclusively as a non-partisan figure from 2022 to 2025.
Gordana Mitrović, on the other hand, is protesting, saying that TV Vijesti did not give her a broader context for the statement in which she denied that she was politically active and claims that it was all insinuations.
"Those commissions were not from the party's profile. So, those commissions did not include people who were party soldiers, people who had membership cards."
After this statement broadcast in yesterday's report, Bastijančić reacted with the intention of removing possible doubts regarding his membership in the DPS Commission for the Promotion of a Democratic Society, which, in addition to experts, included the current DPS leader Danijel Živković and former MP Marta Šćepanović.
Bastijančić explained to TV Vijesti how he told the members of the Parliamentary Election Commission that he had never held a membership card for any party and that he had been engaged in that body solely as an expert, together with other experts from various fields. He stated that he further clarified this on a second occasion, when, upon the intervention of the President of the Commission, he answered the same question again during the hearing:
"It's true, I was on the commission that was with the Civic Platform, but that commission also included people who were not members of the parties," he said.
Candidate Gordana Mitrović also reacted to what was said in the report, believing that her statement broadcast by TV Vijesti, in which she called the portal's November 2021 announcement that she had been elected president of the Patriotic-Committee Alliance as "disinformation" and "half-information", was selectively published. She claims that TV Vijesti, by not providing a broader context, misled the public and violated her rights and interests, and that the television station did not act ethically and professionally:
"I have already informed the Commission about the controversial article that exists on the portals in my application for the Competition and attached the Decision of the Ministry of Public Administration dated October 7, 2021, from which it is clear that the person mentioned in the aforementioned article as the president of the Patriotic-Committee Alliance was largely without any authority in that party at the time the article was published, and thus I could not have been elected to the position that is insinuated in both the controversial article and your contribution."
Mitrović says that in her application for the competition and in her interview with the Commission, she clearly stated that in November 2021, she spoke with Tanja Knežević Perišić and other representatives of the Patriotic-Committee Alliance with the aim of electing her as president of the Podgorica branch of the PKS. She states that she made accepting the position conditional on a prior check of the register of political parties, due to information that there had been status changes in that party.
"As the investigation confirmed my suspicions, the process of my election, let alone any formal decision in this regard, not only never occurred, but could not have occurred because I never came into direct or indirect contact with the then-largely appointed and registered new leadership of the aforementioned party," Mitrović added.
As a reminder, the Parliamentary Commission for the Election of the President and Members of the Central Election Commission announced yesterday that none of the eight candidates were elected and that the competition will be repeated.
Bonus video:
