Since September, the Constitutional Court has not had a quorum, and therefore, it is not functional. Without the Constitutional Court, a large number of processes in the country are blocked, and the Executive Director of MANS, Vanja Ćalović, has no dilemma – the main culprits are the parliamentary parties.
“We are all hostages of their political agreements and political interests, because someone does not want to go to the elections because they are afraid of what results they will have and whether they will be able to achieve the results they had in the last elections”, Ćalović said.
Analyst Aleksandar Dragićević also believes that by blocking the institutions, the elections are avoided. In his words, it suits the parties for the state to be in some form of destabilization.
There is a mention of a concentration government. Montenegro is starting to resemble the term paper of a student of political science; we tried minority, expert, now concentration government, lists are appearing again, insertion ‘by depth’ and the like, and until they make an agreement, it is fine for some of them who do not have a census or have only a few percent of support to remain in power”, Dragićević says.
There was enough time to reach an agreement on the judges of the Constitutional Court, our interlocutors agreed. However, the parties waited until the day before the voting to give the agreement one last chance.
“It is utterly irresponsible, and the position of the political elites has also been irresponsible all these years, not months, but years, because they knew that at some point those judges had to be elected. It is not enough to elect only one judge of the Constitutional Court, what are we going to do if someone gets sick or something similar, thus, it is necessary to elect all judges. Let me remind you that we have over 3,000 pending cases and over 250 initiatives for the assessment of constitutionality”, Dragićević adds.
“I think that the Deputy Prime Minister and the leader of SNP gave the most honest answer to that question, when he said that judges of the Constitutional Court should be divided on political grounds. That is the reason why we are all waiting for the politicians to agree on how they will divide the judges of the Constitutional Court ‘by depth’. At the moment, there is no such agreement, because we all know that there are two judges in the Constitutional Court who are very close to the former regime and one who is close to the new government, and now negotiations are being held on how to do the math for someone to have a political majority instead of finding judges who will ensure that the Constitution is implemented”, Ćalović believes.
Four candidates for judges will be before the MPs tomorrow, who should be elected by a three-fifths majority, i.e. by 49 votes out of a total of 81. This means that, in addition to the MPs of the ruling majority, the election should be supported by at least eight other MPs of the opposition.
Source: RTCG
