MPs of the URA Civic Movement will attend the Parliament sitting on Friday if the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) accepts the opposition’s request to repeat parliamentary elections, Mina news agency reports.
The Parliament is to discuss the Draft Law on Ratification of the North Atlantic Treaty on 28 April, at a sitting to be held in Cetinje.
“URA MPs require DPS to accept the first and most important opposition’s demand – repeating general elections. In that case, URA MPs will ask party bodies’ approval to attend the Parliament sitting at which MPs will vote on joining NATO,” URA deputy president Nedjeljko Rudovic told Mina.
According to him, it is clear that the Parliament does not have full legitimacy to adopt any decisions, let alone an important decision such as joining NATO, since “at the previous parliamentary elections, DPS usurped power by election fraud and creating a state of emergency”.
“Having in mind that NATO membership is one of URA’s goals and that such a historic decision must not be tarnished by objections of not being founded in the people’s will, taking into account all the different opinions, we consider that such a decision is necessary to be indisputable,” said Rudovic.
He called in mind that 25 out of the 28 NATO member states made the decision on the alliance membership in their parliaments.
“However – it is also true that none of those parliamentary compositions were deficient, but all of them were working at full capacity. Our support for NATO membership is strong, but our presence in the Parliament on 28 April depends on DPS’s consent to create election rules and conditions that will prevent election rigging,” said Rudovic.
He believes that “without idealising NATO, it is indisputable that Montenegro will ensure long-term security by joining the military-political alliance”.
According Rudovic, thus Montenegro increases its chases to truly join the company of developed western democracies and to finally obtain a transparent, accountable and controllable government.
“Given the complicated political situation in the country – DPS, which seized power by political violence in October last year, and a part of the opposition, which is trying to sabotage the pro-Western course of Montenegro, we call on everyone to be responsible towards the historic moment,” Rudovic said.
URA called on DPS and prime minister Dusko Markovic to “be finally responsible towards their country and people, and to show, at least for a moment, that the interest of Montenegro is more important than the one of DPS”.
Speaking on the independence referendum in 2006, Rudovic said that the support for the restoration of independence would have been higher than 55.5% “had the former government been responsible and committed to the progress of Montenegro”.
In the same way, as Rudovic said, the NATO membership cause would win an overwhelming majority in a referendum in 2017, if Montenegro had fair and responsible authorities.
“However, the government is avoiding the referendum, because they are aware that a significant part of the citizens are against NATO out of disgust towards one of its promoters, ie DPS, which compromises all the far-reaching important decisions for Montenegro by its wrong politics,” Rudovic said.
