Sbutega was last night unanimously elected at the General Meeting held in the Church of St. Paul in Kotor, while captain Ilija Radovic was elected vice-admiral, and architect Aleksandar Dender the new Chairman of the Board.
Boka Navy is 12 centuries old, the oldest brotherhood of sailors in the world, and it now has its fourth admiral since the World War II.
Sbutega is Montenegrin Ambassador to Italy and Malta in the non-residential basis, a university professor, a distinguished diplomat, member of the Order of Malta Knights, who also served as the Ambassador of Montenegro to the Holy See.
Due to his obligations, he did not attend the meeting.
The last night’s assembly is the first such meeting in six years, and it gave an opportunity to change a few things in the Statute.
Boka Navy 809 will from now on be known only as the Boka Navy. After forty years, the Kotor subsidiary was transformed in an umbrella organization with branches in Tivat, Herceg Novi and Belgrade.
“Despite years of negotiations and efforts, we were unable to find a common solution with the leadership of the Croatian branch, the Boka Navy 809 Zagreb, which operates completely autonomously and is not part of the Boka Navy”, the report from the assembly reads.
Particular dissatisfaction was pointed at the Ministry of Culture of Montenegro, which still hasn’t come around to submitting to UNESCO the proposition to proclaim the Boka Navy an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Montenegro.
