Montenegro's government approved Constitutional Agreement with Serbian Church, Abazovic loses majority support

Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic said this agreement was approved after more than four hours of discussion.

For the adoption of the Constitutional Agreement, 13 ministers voted, five opposed, while three ministers did not participate in the session.

With that, the government approved the previously agreed agreement by Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic with Patriarch Porfirije, despite the rejection of a part of ministers and parliamentary majority supporting that government, Rel reports.

Deputy Prime Minister Rasko Konjevic said the government and Dritan Abazovic are thus losing the parliamentary majority he has supported so far.

Following the adoption of this document, the Constitutional Agreement will be sent to the Serbian Orthodox Church synod with headquarters in Belgrade, which also needs to accept it. As warned earlier by Patriarch Porfirije and Prime Minister Abazovic, on the date of signing the Agreement in Montenegro will be reached over time.

Earlier, some of the parties that are in Government or support it in Parliament have warned the initiative of cutting the Parliament's mandate and organising extraordinary parliamentary elections, in the event the Abazovic minority government approves the Constitutional Agreement.

Under the Constitution, the Assembly could cut its mandate with the State President, Government's proposal or with the proposal of at least 25 deputies.

Among the opponents of signing the current text of the Agreement are President Milo Djukanovic's Democratic Party of Socialists, which does not have ministers in Government, but gives parliamentary support to SDP, a part of the opposition, Montenegrin national associations, a part of the non-governmental sector...

They consider the Constitutional Agreement to place the Serbian Church on the state of Montenegro and translates the Montenegrin cultural and religious heritage into the Serb.

The nongovernmental sector has pointed to a range of judicial anomalies, from the fact that certain provisions are contrary to the positive regulations of Montenegro to the declaration that this agreement violates the secular character of the state, guaranteed by the Constitution.

Despite opposition to part of the opinion, which requires that the agreement be debated and its text corrected, Prime Minister Abazovic implemented the approval procedure for only ten days.

Initially, he formed the working group for the negotiations, which, as soon as the public was informed, had only one session, then announced the text of the agreement agreed with the Serbian Orthodox Church and announced its approval a day later, during a meeting with the patriarch in Belgrade.

The Constitutional Agreement on Relations Between the State of Montenegro and the Serbian Orthodox Church largely contains obligations of the state and institutions to this religious community.

The Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro is enabled by the exterritority of religious objects, the religious teaching in public schools opens up, the subjectivity is known for six centuries longer than the Serbian Orthodox Church has in Serbia, gives it public-juridical competence and in some areas enables legal status equal to state institutions.