The citizens of Montenegro do not perceive failures in respecting and strengthening the democracy guaranteed by the Constitution in the abstract. Its lack has direct consequences on our lives, while we measure appreciation by clearly set goals. One of them, the adoption of the Law on legal recognition of gender identity on the basis of self-determination, has been repeatedly addressed to the Government and Parliament of Montenegro, numerous reports of European institutions, clear urging of the united civil sector, and since May also the Action Plan for Chapter 23.
Ignoring such issues is not only a violation of the human rights of some citizens of Montenegro, who, we remind you, due to the lack of this legal framework, and in order to realize their basic rights, still have to go through the sterilization process so that their gender identity is recognized. The broader context, which must concern us, regardless of our identity, is the following:
In cooperation between the civil sector and government institutions, a draft law was created that would ensure, not only that this omission is not ignored, but also guarantee the protection of the fundamental value of self-determination. The text of the draft suffered numerous compromises that were insisted on by government institutions, and because of which the law narrowly lost its essence. The finalization of the draft was followed by public declarations of support for its adoption by a sufficient number of parliamentarians. However, when it came time to vote on the law, everything indicated that it was blocked from the top by the President of the Assembly, Andrija Mandić, by continuously removing the law from the Assembly’s agenda.
This act of violation of democracy, which both the President of the Assembly Mandić and the Prime Minister Spajić tried to slip “under the radar”, filling their mouths with European promises, is characteristic of their political sensibility, which is anything but transparent. And among the topics that actually deserve the attention of our prime minister, we highlight the reaction to the murder of the conservative American influencer-activist, Charlie Kirk, which also affected Spajić more than any attack on activists from his own country. In just the past month, we recorded the threats of MP Knežević addressed to Aleksandar Dragićević, the Democrats’ pursuit of Teja Gorjanc Prelević, not to mention the almost daily messages that queer and other activists are bombarded with, and which, since we are doing both our work and the government’s, we do not manage to count or report.
Since in a post on the social network X, our prime minister states that “ideologies come and go, but human lives are priceless and cannot be returned”, we openly ask, how much are the lives of citizens whom he represents with his mandate worth? In two months, we will know this year’s statistics of the number of transgender people killed around the world, and the exact number, which does not fall below 300 in any year, is marked by the Day of Remembrance for the victims of transphobia, countless of whom could have been saved if there had been legal regulations such as we are currently advocating for in Montenegro. For them, the prime minister, until now, has not singled out a single letter.
Therefore, we conclude that human lives are very “valuable” and that the price of ours is clearly calculated by current political calculations. So, when is the right time for democracy for all, not just the chosen ones? Will it be when Montenegrin life also enters the aforementioned statistics, or by the end of the 3rd quarter, as defined in the Action Plan? Please note: if democracy is inherited only unilaterally, then it is not democracy, but the bureaucratic mutilation of honest citizens, and the inheritance of the corruption of its representatives.
