The non-appearance of members of the parliamentary majority at the session of the Security and Defense Committee, where the Report on the work of the National Security Agency was supposed to be considered, represents a political message to the director of the National Security Agency, said the member of the European Union, Nikola Zirojević, as a guest on the show “24 Sata” on Television E and ordered that the authorities obstruct the work of the Committee in order to avoid parliamentary control of the security sector.
The Committee for Security and Defense did not hold the session where it was supposed to consider the Report on the work of the ANB, because the members of the parliamentary majority did not appear, so there was no quorum.
Zirojević reminds that the parliamentary majority currently does not have a majority in the Committee, because the position of former PES MP Miodrag Laković has not yet been filled. The board currently has 12 members – six from the government and six from the opposition.
“They can choose the seventh member from among the parliamentary majority and they can choose the president or the president of the Committee. It is a simple procedure that can be completed literally in half an hour. However, it still seems to me that this is about the controlling role of the Committee. Regardless of who presides and who has the majority, six members of the opposition sit in the Security Committee and have numerous mechanisms by which they can control the security sector,” said Zirojević.
He reminds that it is the sector with the most anomalies, the sector that leads the way in terms of political persecution of officials and abuses.
“That’s why it’s quite clear why someone, and that someone is the megaphone of organized crime in Montenegro – Democratic Montenegro, which dominates the security sector, is not comfortable with the controlling role of the parliament in the security and defense sector, which is predominantly implemented through the Security Committee,” said Zirojević.
Speaking about the possible consequences of not considering the ANB report, Zirojević said that they depend on the executive power, recalling the case of the former director of the Police Administration, Zoran Brđanin, who lost his position after the work report and was dismissed by the Minister of Internal Affairs.
“The mere failure to vote on the report, even if it does not receive the required majority at the session that will have a quorum, does not necessarily mean that the director must be dismissed. It is only one of the conditions, and it is left to the Minister of the Interior to assess whether he will initiate the dismissal procedure. In this situation, we cannot say that the report was not voted on, because it was not even discussed. There was no quorum, so the report was not even considered. Unfortunately, it is possible that by the end of the spring session, by July 31, the parliamentary majority simply will not be provided a quorum and that the reports would not be considered at all. After that, according to the ruling of the Administrative Court in the case of Brđanin, any subsequent statement would have no legal effect,” Zirojević pointed out.
He believes that even within the parliamentary majority there is no unified attitude towards the director of ANB, Ivica Janović, and that the Democrats were sending poison darts at him because he did not work according to their will.
“The question remains whether the report on the work of the ANB could pass at all. We do not know how everyone in the parliamentary majority thinks, but if we take into account previous events and practice, it is very possible that this is also one of the reasons why the holding of the Security Committee sessions is obstructed. In this way, they are sending a message first of all to the director of the ANB, who is an official of their government, who has already arrived twice with his associates and responded to the call, but there are no members of the parliamentary majority to provide quorum for the session of the Security Committee”, emphasized Zirojević.
He reminds that all the reports should be on the agenda by the end of July and points out that, as the deputy chairman of the Committee who currently performs the duties of chairman, he will insist on scheduling a new session.
“We will fulfill our obligation and put those points on the agenda. Do I expect them to provide a quorum? I don’t, because it is already obvious that they have an order from someone from the top not to appear at the session,” said Zirojević.
He also announced that he would inform all relevant international addresses about the situation in the Security and Defense Committee.
“I will look for a reaction and I hope there will be one, because this is not about any individual, but about a serious institutional problem. The control role of the parliament is meaningless precisely in the sector which, in my humble opinion, is the most important sector in the functioning of the executive power”, said Zirojević.
Speaking about the announced debate on constitutional changes, Zirojević reminded that this process has been in the parliamentary procedure since March and assessed that the parliamentary majority is trying to shift the responsibility for the deadlock to the opposition.
“As for us from the opposition, it is quite clear that we have given the parliamentary majority a platform on which we can talk. If what the president of the parliament is doing is a positive signal that they are ready to accept the terms of that platform, good luck – we are here to negotiate. However, the platform is the basis for any conversation with the opposition and our position has not changed. It is up to the parliamentary majority to decide whether they want to support what is written in it and build a bridge between the government and the opposition in order to complete our task on the European path, or will continue to behave as before and consciously obstruct the European path of Montenegro”, emphasized Zirojević.
Commenting on the announced constitutional changes that foresee the abolition of immunity for members of the Government for corrupt criminal acts, Zirojević claims that such immunity does not exist even now.
“Dealing with corruption is not part of my job, nor does any minister’s job description say that he should deal with corruption. In my understanding, even today, the Constitution cannot protect any of us from criminal acts in the field of corruption. Rather, I think it is about populist measures that they want to present to the citizens that they are honest, and we will see how honest they really are when this government falls and when they find themselves in front of certain court processes,” concluded Zirojević.
