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Minorities Cry Foul Over Promise of Guaranteed Seats

15 05 2007  Now the independence campaign over, minorities say government is reneging on key pledge concerning their representation in parliament.

By Tufik Softic in Berane

Parties claiming to represent ethnic minorities in Montenegro are crying foul because the republic’s draft new constitution which is now amid so-called public debate, makes no special provision for seats in parliament for their communities.

The public debate about the document is opened until May 28. The adoption of the constitution is scheduled for later this year.

They say this promise featured clearly in the campaign leading up to last year’s independence referendum and encouraged many minorities to vote for separation from Serbia and for the ruling coalition, led by the Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS.

Minority parties recall that the DPS offered guaranteed seats in parliament for some communities in the referendum campaign.

They promised three seats for the Bosniak Party, which attracts a part of votes from the large Muslim community comprising 15 per cent of the population, for example.

At the time, the DPS said subsequent electoral legislature would define the exact number of seats that minorities would be entitled to hold.

The plan was that ethnic minorities making up between one and five per cent of the population would receive one reserved parliamentary seat, and minorities making up more than five per cent of the population would receive two seats.

Shortly before the referendum, parliament passed a law to implement these proposals.

However, in July 2006 the constitutional court unexpectedly declared it unconstitutional and struck two articles of the proposed law down.

Since then, there has been no sign of the government reviving the proposal, leaving minorities feeling short-changed.

“We have been deceived,” said Kemal Purisic, of the Bosniak Party, and added that the party may lodge a complaint to the Council of Europe.

Purisic said allocated seats for certain communities were needed because only the larger ethnic minorities, living in concentrated areas, were able to win seats in parliament without aid.

This has benefited the ethnic Albanians who make up six per cent of the population and hold five seats in the present parliament.

But it has left smaller and more scattered minorities like the Roma with no hope of direct representation.

Purisic compared Montenegro’s current constitutional proposals unfavourably with the situation in neighbouring countries, where minorities enjoy guaranteed representation.

“Croatia has guaranteed seats [for Serbs and others] while each ethnic minority community in Slovenia is represented by a seat in parliament,” he said.

“In Kosovo, Serbs are represented by 15 deputies and the other communities by five. Another ten or so states in Europe have automatic seats in parliament for their minorities.”

The Croatian minority in Montenegro now has a representative in parliament for the first time - but only after forming a local coalition with the DPS.

Bozo Nikolic, the deputy from the Croat Civil Initiative, wants a programme to guarantee minorities what he calls “authentic representation” in parliament as well as in local assemblies.

“There are 7,000 Croats in Montenegro and all we are asking for is one independent deputy who will not have to form a coalition, which limits our options,” he said.

Nikolic says allocated seats would not undermine the concept of a civic democracy. “We do want a civic constitution,” he maintained. “But some sort of a mixture has to be applied in order to satisfy the minorities as well.”

Vaselj Sinistaj, leader of the Albanian Alternative, said he doubted the campaign pledges to minorities could be revived that easily following the court’s judgment.

“The law obtained by the Bosniaks was the result of a political bargain,” he said. “It was passed only a few days before the independence referendum and scrapped shortly after; it’s unlikely the Constitutional Court will reverse its decision without the government’s consent.”

The government, meanwhile, is biding its time. It points out that in a country where no one community is in the majority, working out a system acceptable to all would be fraught with difficulties.

Miodrag Vukovic, a deputy of the DPS, said there was a clear problem in reconciling the notion of allocated seats for certain communities with democratic principles.

“We cannot turn parliament into a body in which deputies are simply appointed, bypassing elections,” he said. “That would make elections meaningless.”

Vukovic denied that Bosniaks had been deceived, pointing out that ethnic Montenegrins had also been disappointed by the failure to proclaim independent Montenegro the national state of Montenegrins.

Rifat Rastoder, of the Social Democrats who are in coalition with the DPS, take a more moderate line.

“There are several ways to resolve this issue,” he said. “Separate electoral units are not … necessarily the best solution because applying it to all minorities would fragment Montenegro.”

“Perhaps the best way to do things is to copy the Serbian or the Slovenian model,” Rastoder added in a reference to the system that allows allocation of a certain number of parliamentary seats to minorities.

Rastoder said it was important to consider the ways to improve individual rights, as well as the collective rights of ethnic minorities.

“Montenegro is a civic state; there is no such thing as an ethnic minority in a state that’s not ethnic by definition,” he said.

Tufik Softic is Radio Berane director and editor-in-chief. Balkan Insight is BIRN`s online publication.

This article was published with the support of the British embassy in Belgrade and National Endowment for Democracy - NED, as part of BIRN's Minority Media Training and Reporting Project.