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New Constitution Exposes Montenegro’s Basic Divisions

14 12 2006  With government and opposition at loggerheads, no one expects a final draft to emerge any time soon.

By Bojana Stanisic in Podgorica (Balkan Insight, 14 Dec 06)

Montenegro’s new constitution is causing new conflicts between the government and the mainly pro-Serbian opposition, almost certainly delaying its adoption to next summer.

After the republic proclaimed independence in May, parliament in Podgorica began work on a new constitution at end of November.

But the opposition has refused to join the parliamentary committee on the constitution, partly over a dispute on the procedural rules concerning adoption.

These state that parliament needs only a two-thirds majority to adopt the constitution. The opposition want fresh elections and confirmation of the document by a two-thirds majority in the newly elected parliament.

In consequence, the ruling and opposition parties are unlikely to reach a quick consensus on constitutional changes, as the Council of Europe has urged.

Government and opposition are also at loggerheads over several key points inside the proposed document.

These include language, state symbols, the position of churches and whether the constitution will allow for a fresh referendum on statehood.

The ruling pro-independence Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS, and the Social Democratic Party, SDP, want the official language to be called Montenegrin (they dispute that it is essentially the same as Serbian). They also want to retain the republic’s recently adopted state symbols, and are adamant that the new constitution will not allow for a new referendum on independence.

Their opponents in the Serbian List, the strongest opposition group, want the official tongue to be called Serbian, different state symbols, a different national anthem and to keep the door open to the possibility of a new state union with Serbia.

On language, they cite the latest census in which 62 per cent of citizens said they speak Serbian. On the church, they say the Montenegrin Orthodox Church is not canonically recognised by other Orthodox churches and so cannot gain equal status to the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Prevailing opinion in the government on religion is that religious communities should not be mentioned at all in the new constitution, while some would like mention made of the Serbian Orthodox Church and its Montenegrin counterpart.

Some in the Serbian List also want to retain an ethnic concept of the state. They want all the nationalities – Montenegrins, Serbs, Bosniaks, Muslims, Albanians and Croats – represented in a second chamber of parliament. The others want a “civil” society based on the concept of equal citizenship.

As both government and the opposition foresee long, heated debates on these issues, it is clear the drafting of the constitution will not be completed by an end-of-year deadline.

Completing the adoption of a new constitution was defined as a priority following the May 21 referendum on independence, which ended the 88-year-old union with Serbia.

In the September 10 elections, the DPS and the SDP, the standard-bearers of the independence project, won 41 seats in the 80-strong parliament, while the pro-union opposition won 23. The Movement for Change, which advocates radical reform and took no clear stance on independence, won 11 seats.

After the election, a team of legal experts in the Council for Constitutional Issues presented their own text of a new constitution as a starting point.

This version is close to the government on all the main points, describing the official language as Montenegrin and giving the Montenegrin Orthodox Church the same status as that of the Serbian Orthodox Church. It rules out the possibility of a referendum on the country’s status.

The governing parties also defined the procedure for adopting the constitution by a two-thirds majority in parliament. Only if it is adopted by a simple majority would a referendum be necessary.

The opposition, who want extraordinary elections and then a new two-thirds majority in a new parliament, complained about the procedural rules to the constitutional court, which issued a ruling on December 6.

Much to the opposition’s disappointment, the court said the government was entitled to define a new procedure for the adoption of the constitution.

The current constitution, in force since 1992, defines Montenegro as a civil state, says the official language is Serbian and recognises several religious denominations - the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Islamic community, the Roman Catholic Church and others.

Dobrilo Dedeic, a deputy in parliament for the Serbian List, told Balkan Insight that pro-union forces would continue to fight for the right to hold another referendum on statehood.

“The Serbian List will never give up on the concept of reuniting Montenegro with Serbia, which we plan to implement with the help of a [new] referendum on Montenegro’s status,” he said.

Miodrag Vukovic, of the DPS, on the other hand, said moves to hold another referendum on the country’s independence would be unprecedented. “Since Montenegro is [already] independent, then this is nonsense,” he said.

Political observers predict that the struggle over a constitution will deepen the existing rifts on the political scene. They mostly oppose creating any provisions for a new referendum on statehood.

“This is a very delicate matter, because things still haven’t quieted down after the last referendum,” analyst Svetozar Jovicevic told Balkan Insight.

The votes of the Movement for Change deputies will be decisive on many of the controversial issues. If they vote with the government alongside the ethnic minority parties, the government will secure its two-thirds majority.

They say they merely seek an acceptable compromise on the language question, and on religion they want the constitution to define church and state as separate.

The government side says it has no intention of denying the use of Serbian. They say naming the language Montenegrin will have little practical effect.

“The language is defined as Montenegrin, with a note that … everyone speaks the same language in the territory of four former Yugoslav republics,” said Srdjan Darmanovic, a member of the Council for Constitutional Issues.

“The other three republics have also named it after their states - Serbia has named it Serbian, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnian and Croatia, Croatian.”

But the pro-union forces are unlikely to be soothed by such a formula. They want the state language called Serbian - and nothing else.

“If the framers of the constitution want to avoid political complications and instability, the status of the Serbian language must not be thrown into questions,” said Dedeic.

“If the language spoken by two thirds of the people was renamed, it would constitute a grave violation of fundamental human rights.”

Montenegro’s president, Filip Vujanovic, has said that the dispute over the churches strengthens the argument for a total separation of church and state.

“Montenegro should be a secular state,” he said, “which means the state cannot arbitrate and determine which church should be canonically recognised.”

With so many outstanding issues, no predicts an early finish to the business of drafting the document.

“The way things are now, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect a final draft by the end of the year and the adoption of the constitution in the spring of 2007, as was announced,” said Jovicevic. “I fear that short deadlines are not something we can talk about in this context.”

Bojana Stanisic is a Balkan Insight contributor. Balkan Insight is BIRN’s online publication.