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Citizens of Podgorica, Kotor and Gušinje will elect local authorities this September. The ongoing process of submitting electoral lists in Gušinje will end on August 21, while the process in Podgorica and Kotor will begin today and will last until midnight on September 3.
The first to go to the polls on September 15 will be those who exercised their right to vote in Gušinje. This year’s regular elections will also be the first opportunity to check the balance of power in the northern city after the Bosniak party became the ruling majority and its representatives entered the government.
The former members of the BS formed the Bosnian Democratic Movement (BDP) headed by Sead Šahman on August 1 and announced that they would immediately participate in the local elections in Gušinje. They want to perform independently, but they made it clear that this is impossible. That is, the BDP will not be officially registered until the election day, but will look for alternative solutions.
BS will not act independently, but will govern in coalition with the Social Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party. In early August, the presidents of the municipal councils of both parties – the current municipal president and list holder Sanel Balić, the then Elvis Omeragić and Semih Nikočević – signed a joint performance agreement.
Elections in Kotor have seen various changes in the political game over the past four years and only a few lists are safe at the moment.
Municipality chairman Vladimir Jokić, a senior official in the Democratic Party, announced in mid-July that he would be at the top of the list.
“I hope that by September 30, early October, we will be able to form a new city administration and Kotor will continue to develop,” he said at the time.
The European Union, a non-party platform to which the SD, SDP and LP belong, also published a list. The committee will be led by Miloš Čelanović from the Social Democrats and will include “prominent party figures, but also Kotos who are not members of any party but have extremely high achievements and recognition in the fields of science, education, sports and the arts”.
In light of the repeated political turmoil in the former ruling coalition “For the Future of Kotor” and the Democratic Party, the first participation in the local elections was announced at the end of last year. Among them are the Montenegrin Civic Action Party and the list of young Kotorans, former members of the former Liberal Alliance, which later became members of the Liberal Party, whose coordinator is Goran Grbovic.
The Democratic Choice of Montenegro party has also announced its participation and action at the state level. The party is chaired by Davor Kumburović, who co-founded it with his brother Igor Kumburović, both former members of the Democratic Party.
The current vice-president of the municipality, Siniša Kovačević, is a former official of the Montenegrin coalition government and the founder of a political movement whose goal is to “create the Boka Kotorska Economic and Cultural Autonomous Region within the Montenegrin Canton, modeled after the regions that all EU member states have on their territory”.There is also the “Grbalj lista”, which consists of a group of citizens from the Kotor settlement and the OFK “Grbalj”.
As expected, most political parties are focusing their resources and campaign activities mainly on the local elections in Podgorica. Residents of the capital with voting rights will go to the polls on September 29, just one day before the submission of electoral lists, and it is still unclear who they will be able to vote for.
Just two days after Montenegrin President Jakov Milatovic called for early elections in the capital, former Justice Minister Andrej Milovic took the lead in announcing his candidacy for the future mayor of Podgorica. He will lead the “Podgorica List”, which, according to him, will not include any former and current politicians, but people who are well known throughout Podgorica.
The European Progress Party was the first of the newly formed parties to announce its participation in the capital’s elections. The committee is led by Prime Minister Dusko Markovic, a former Democratic Party official, while the municipal committee formed earlier this week is led by Ilya Mugosh.
Since July 4, the European Union, consisting of the Social Democratic Party, the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Party, announced that they will participate in the pre-election contest on their own. The only supra-party platform list among the three associated parties is led by MP Boris Mugoša. The core of their activities are current social, cultural, social, business and sports topics, and their desire is to “cultivate the old and authentic Podgorica, that is Titograd, and develop the new and modern”.
The Napreyed Movement list will participate in the local elections, with Vuk Kadić, the current director of the Health Insurance Fund, as its leader. Together with him, the founders of the movement are former ministers Marko Kovač (Minister of Justice) and Aleksandar Damjanović (Minister of Finance). As they point out, their program has five key themes, namely: economy, infrastructure, social issues, youth and ecology.
The Democratic Party should act independently, and the list will be led by Nermin Abdić, a member of parliament and chairman of the party’s Podgorica committee. While in previous elections they mostly participated in the coalition to which BS also belonged, this will not be the case this time, the key reason being that the minority party entered the ruling majority at the state level.
At the moment, BS has decided to run independently, and at the head of its list will be Edin Tuzović, the chairman of the Podgorica party committee and a member of the main committee. As a minority list, they only need the support of 150 voters. While they negotiated with PES and the Democratic Party on a joint run, the party body decided two days ago to run independently, but with the possibility of being part of a broader coalition formed by the current government at the state level to meet the requirements of not excluding the Podgorica elections.
Although the BDP’s first priority is the local elections in Gušinje on September 15, the BDP has also announced its participation in the special elections in Podgorica. However, they have not yet specified how they will participate.
The Podgorica Tenants Movement is collecting signatures to participate in the elections in the capital. Dragan Živković of the tenants association “My Home” said that by entering the city council, they hope to solve the long-standing problems of more than 30,000 citizens who have tenant status.
The “Revolution” movement is participating in the Podgorica elections with a list headed by its chairman, Srdjan Perić, who noted that this will be a “political solution to the problems created by the existing structures.”
The Podgorica Movement, former members of the PES, which are close to President Milatović, will form an alliance with the Ura Civic Movement and the Movement for Change (PZP). Former parliamentarian and deputy chairperson of the PZP Blanka Bošniak said that an agreement has been reached in principle, but the first person on the list is still under negotiation. Independent MP Jevrosima Pejović was initially mentioned as the holder of the list, but now the name of Luka Rakčević from Ura is more often heard.
If PES goes to the elections independently, the party’s City Committee Chairman Saša Mujović could be their first choice. Meanwhile, there are reports that PES could form a coalition with the Democratic Party, led by Alexa Bešić. Currently, both parties deny a joint appearance in Podgorica, stressing that such decisions must be made by party bodies.
Democratic People’s Party, New Democratic Party of Serbia and Unity Party Montenegro is one of the parties that will form a coalition, possibly a joint coalition. This was confirmed by DNP Chairman Milan Knežević, as well as Nova and UCG MPs Mitar Šušić and Milivoje Brković.
169,063 citizens have the right to vote in the three cities
The capital’s electoral list must be signed by at least 1,153 voters, while the smaller national list requires 150. Podgorica has 145,908 adults with the right to vote registered on the electoral list.
The electoral list for the Kotor elections requires at least 148 voter signatures. However, lists representing minority groups must be collected more diligently, as in Podgorica, where 150 signatures were collected. The municipality of Boč has 18,538 citizens with the right to vote.
In Gusinje, 4,617 citizens are entitled to vote in these elections.
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