The priority of political actors should be harmonization of the set of election laws and not initiatives for amendments to the Constitution and state symbols, said in the interview for “Pobjeda”, president of the Association of Lawyers of Montenegro, Branislav Radulović.
“Generally speaking, the question of constitutional upgrade is an open process, just like it was the case back in 2013 ,when the Constitution was amended with 16 amendments. At this moment, it is very questionable to open the questions of electoral amendments especially in those areas of the constitutional matter that isn’t related to this issue”, said Radulović.
He points out two great disadvantages of this initiative.
“Firstly, due to the complexity of constitutional amendments, the electoral reform, very demanding and very urgent procedure, will be further prolonged. Secondly, the announced constitutional amendment is entered from the angle of particularly defined interests, which are the product of political and not legal understanding of things, and that can seriously damage the high-quality of the valid constitutional text”, said Radulović.
As he pointed out, the initiative for constitutional amendments was announced without prior consultations with expert associations or scientific institutions and without clearly defined directions.
“Without comprehensive and quality preparation, it’s not very wise to start constitutional reform. When we adopted the existing Constitution, I’ll remind you that we formed an expert team which consisted of seven renowned university professors, who drafted the „expert vision of the Constitution“. That text served as a basis for the Constitutional board for the proposal of the text that was adopted in 2007. The whole process was monitored by the Venice Commission. That kind of work, supported by the academic community and provided international verification, resulted in the existing Constitutional text, which meets the standards of the contemporary constitutionalism”, said Radulović.
He sees the problem in the insufficient understanding of the constitutional text.
“Provisions of the Constitution in the Articles 155 and 156 clearly define the procedure of amending the Constitution, in both procedural and formal sense. In addition, Article 45 should be put in the context of the Article 157 which regulations the need of the establishment of the two/third majority that must be confirmed on the referendum. All these facts indicate that insisting on constitutional amendments is not expedient”, explains Radulović.
Radulović comments on the actual question of changing state symbols:
“Defined and very demanding constitutional majorities required for the amendments of state symbols should be reason enough for all actors of the process to shift the focus now on the harmonization of laws”, points out Radulović.
Radulović is the advocate of the concept “constitutional patriotism”. He says that this idea “affirms the citizenship and social culture”.
“Constitutional patriotism should enable the “minimum joint factor”, which will be the basis for the development of constitutional culture. In multi-ethnic societies, this model might be good for social cohesion, provided that ethnic groups do not neglect the civil and liberal values”, says Radulović.
