UNMIK on AIR

Is There a Need to Regionalize Monte Negro?

In December of 2003, a number of Montenegro-based Albanian citizen and student organizations began to collect signatures amongst the Albanian community to support creating regions based on ethnic population concentrations inside Montenegro.

The Constitution of Montenegro does not draw lines for regions, as the current Montenegrin local governance consists of municipalities.

For weeks since the signature drive began, the Montenegrin media has printed and broadcast comments from Montenegrin officials and representatives of local Albanian parties, condemning the idea to create ethnic regions. But the idea of creating regions or provinces did open a question of the treatment of ethnic communities in Montenegro. We tried to get some answers on this issue from a few Montenegrin Slav and Montenegrin Albanian political representatives.

Hello and welcome. This is UNMIK on AIR programme.

CUT 1 Track 0.08 We called it regionalizing, but in fact it is the question of the decentralization of authority (Edit to) This initiative has been launched after a Washington conference (organized by American-Albanian National Council). Albanian nationality political leaders, intellectuals, representatives of civil society agreed to define its status on a platform that concludes that the best solution for our status (in Monte Negro) is decentralization or as they call it in Europe, regionalizing process.

Nik Gjeloshaj is one of the organizers of the petition calling for the creation of 3 regions inside Montenegro. Gjeloshaj wants to create regions in Malesia, located in the southern-eastern part of Monte Negro, Ulcinj and Plav-Gusinje where there are larger concentrations of ethnic Albanians. Gjeloshaj and supporters of the move to regionalize Montenegro say the current structure of government cannot address the needs of the Albanian population in Montenegro and points to the lack of Albanian cultural centers, construction and maintenance of new roads. Some predominately Albanian villages near the capital are still facing problems with basic necessities like electricity and access to a safe water supply.

Senior Democratic Party of Socialists official, Miodrag Vukovic blasted the idea of creating what he called “ethnic enclaves” inside Montenegro as dangerous, saying the move is incompatible with Montenegrin constitutional provisions.

CUT 2 Track 0.06 No matter how much the authors insist on the opposite the idea is xenophobic, a nationalistic request that is calling on retrograded closing of Albanian national community into territorial ghettos. Also it doesn’t have anything in common with European concept of self-governance. It is harmful not only for Monte Negro but also for Albanian community.

Even so, Albanians in support of creating ethnic regions, like Gjeloshaj, maintain the idea does not threaten the territorial integrity of Montenegro. Supporters of the move to regionalize counter arguments of creating ethnic ghettos, saying the larger aim of the petition is to create a new layer of administration to the existing governance structure of Montenegro. Currently Montenegro local governance is on the municipal level. Gjeloshaj says the idea is to provide for the inclusion of ethnic groups in regional governance- Gjeloshaj insists it is quite natural to make regions on the bases of certain factors:

CUT 3 Track 0.09 We are not calling to close ourselves into ghettos or to create regions on national bases. It is about creating regions on the bases of some specifics. Region means territory. (edit to) So it means that we would like to have regions on the territories that already exists and which already have some specifics like cultural, traditional, and linguistic. We are asking for decentralization of authority ( and giving some authority to this regions). That is the process required by Europe for all the countries that are looking forward to join European Union.

But major Montenegrin Albanian political parties do not share this point of view. Mehmet Bardhi ( said: *barti) is the leader of the Albanian political party in Montenegro, the Democratic League. Bardhi says the Albanian community is separate and distinct already in Montenegro and that territorial regionalisation will serve to further divide them:

CUT 4 Track (01:53) – “We see the status of Albanians in Montenegro inside of a local territorial autonomy stretched by the border with Albania where Albanian community lives. I think that the regionalisation of territories where the Albanian community lives is totally unacceptable because it splits and fractions our community even more, having in mind that Albanians are not in great numbers in Montenegro.”

Ferhat Dinosha, leader of another Montenegrin Albanian political party, the Democtic Union of Albanians or DUA, also opposes the initiative to regionalize.

Dinosha points out that, in some of the territories proposed in the regionalization process, Albanians are not in the majority-- rather Bosniaks.

As the public debate continues on regionalisation, a similar issue occupied public discussion regarding a new law to restructure the capital of Montenegro, Podgorica.

The government of Montenegro mandated for the capital of Podgorica a “special status” to now consist of not just the city of Podgorica, but also to incorporate neighboring municipalities.

Ferhat Dinosha said problems arose when the nearby municipality of Tuzi and its Albanian majority, protested being incorporated into the same municipality as the capital Podgorica under the Montenegrin Government’s plan—a plan which Dinosha describes as mandating the municipality of Tuzi to forfeit its leadership structure to the existing Municipality of Podgorica:

CUT 5 Track 0.29 Draft law on capital Podgorica foresees some capital municipality of Tuzi that wouldn’t have any authorities and wouldn’t be created under European standards. We’ve rejected this draft law like something that cannot be accepted by Albanians in Malesia. (edit to) But the fact is that Government is slow in implementation of European democratic standards on status and rights of national minorities and in building some objects, like cultural centers in Ulcinj and Tuzi, municipalities with Albanian majority or building plumbing or power plants for some villages, that would remarkably improve position of Albanians in Monte Negro.

Dinosha says the Montenegrin plan to create a special status area of Podgorica has the potential to create a dangerous scenario by which

Albanians could be pawns for certain political causes. Dinosha insists that the Montenegrin Albanian political parties will continue struggle for better status but only on democratic standards.

Still it is unclear how many support the push to regionalize Monte Negro, and of course how determined the group will be in the future.

Meanwhile the Government of Monte Negro is already under the gun to modify its constitution. Monte Negro will undergo a process to have its Constitution harmonize with the “Constitutional Charter” of the State Union of Serbia and Monte Negro and with European Union laws and regulations.