The silence of representatives of Albanian parties in the Montenegrin parliament, before the controversial law on spatial planning and construction of facilities is considered, is rather concerning. The same goes for their representatives who are in power in Ulcinj and the urban municipality of Tuzi, who remain silent despite all the warnings of the public and the profession of harmful consequences that the law could have for the area of the southernmost Montenegrin municipality.
Over the past few days, heads of several Montenegrin municipalities from different political parties have publicly expressed their disagreement with the government’s intention to completely centralize spatial planning and deprive local self-governments of independent planning and unobstructed development, and such opinions were even given by some of the ruling coalition members.
In contrast, the coalition of the Albanian parties that make up the ruling majority in the Parliament, FORCA, the Democratic Union of Albanians (DUA) and the Albanian Alternative (AA), the public has not yet heard any criticism of the document the adoption of which will let the Government of Montenegro carry out those megalomaniac projects against which the citizens and the non-governmental sector are protesting, even those on the territory of Ulcinj.
Silence of the Albanian coalition that makes the ruling majority is even more surprising when recounting events surrounding the planned “valorization” of the Valdanos cove, the Long Beach, and the shameless concretization that the government had recently prepared for Ulcinj Saline.
We want to believe that the persistent silence of the Albanian parties does not mean approval of the government’s plan for the complete takeover of control over the resources of Ulcinj, because this would mean the ultimate betrayal of the interests of the citizens of Ulcinj, and the support for the “development” of Ulcinj in accordance with the interests of the construction lobby and its associated criminal organizations.
If the Albanian ruling coalition still persists in being silent and the law is adopted thanks to their vote, we hope that the representatives of the coalition will have a rational explanation for their voters, primarily for the citizens of Tuzi and Ulcinj, who would certainly want to know why their representatives placed joined the construction lobby and the government’s plan to hand the lobby one of the most valuable remaining resources of this country without much noise.
However, we believe that it would be politically responsible if the representative of the Albanian coalition in the Parliament, MP Genci Nimanbegu, informed whether and why he supported this law and what benefits the citizens would have from its adoption. However, his failure to react opens up a vast space for speculation that the decision at the tomorrow’s plenum will not be conditioned by the interests of the citizens but someone else’s. We hope that Mr. Nimanbegu is aware of the importance of the decision taken at tomorrow’s session, and that his vote could directly confront corruption and be in the interest of the citizens, or vice versa.
MANS had earlier called on the government to withdraw the scandalous draft law, and today urges MPs to vote against the adoption, because the provisions that the law contains represent an unprecedented open incitement of corruption and the promotion of the Ministry of Sustainable Development into a service center of the construction lobby.
Dejan Milovac
MANS Investigation Center Director
