DPS walks out of extraordinary Assembly session, Mandic: Those who enabled the crimes now lecture me on morality

MPs of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) walked out of today’s extraordinary session of the Assembly of Montenegro, in protest at the majority’s refusal to allow a vote on the dismissal of Assembly Speaker Andrija Mandic, as the ETV portal reports. According to the same source, the head of the DPS parliamentary group, Andrija Nikolic, said his party is not boycotting the Assembly and will not leave undefended “the country’s most important political arena”, but there will be no cooperation within the institutions and no joint voting with the majority until a vote is allowed on the glorification of war criminals – or until Mandic publicly and unequivocally declares that Ratko Mladic is a war criminal and that genocide was committed in Srebrenica.

Nikolic said the Assembly was closed to the public – journalists and television crews were not allowed to enter – and that the request for the presence or absence of MPs to be established publicly was refused. “This is not simply an avoidance of a democratic vote; it is an attack on democracy and the constitutional order, because the extraordinary session requested by at least two-thirds of MPs is a constitutional category and cannot be emptied of meaning by holding the quorum,” he is quoted as saying by ETV. He also warned that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is coming to Montenegro on Thursday and the majority will have to explain to her why, faced with the choice between the European path and protecting Mandic, it chose the latter.

In response, Mandic gave a long speech in which he defended his condolences to the Mladic family. As ETV reports, he said that in his condolence message for Darko Mladic he had not mentioned his father “with a single word”, but had followed “the tradition that existed in Montenegro”. He added that Serbia had handed Ratko Mladic over to the Hague Tribunal, whose decision everyone respects, and that his son is “an honest and worthy man who has not broken any law”.

Mandic accused the DPS of having voted for fewer European laws than all the majority parties – only 26 percent of them – and of having done everything to help Ratko Mladic and the Army of Republika Srpska in the 1990s. “They even arrested members of the former SDA who did not agree with this. The war in Bosnia lasted because Milo Djukanovic, the DPS and the Government of Montenegro supplied the Bosnian Serb army and leadership with oil, volunteers, uniforms and ammunition. The war would have ended in 1994. Perhaps Srebrenica would not have happened,” Mandic said, according to ETV.

Civic Movement URA MP Zoran Mikic asked Mandic why, after his “monologue”, there had been no debate a few days earlier, and said URA MPs would not take part in today’s session. Social Democrat MP Boris Mugosa said Mandic had violated the Rules of Procedure today by delivering a monologue instead of allowing the session that was not held last week to take place. After the opposition walked out, the agenda was approved with 43 votes in favour, none against and no abstentions, and the session continued, ETV reported.