Nick Gjeloshaj, the ethnic Albanian mayor of Tuzi in Montenegro, has accused the country’s new government of systematically discriminating against its Albanian minority. Speaking to Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), he said he had formally informed Montenegro’s international partners, “all the way to the US State Department,” and was also working with Albanian-American lobby groups.
Budget Cuts and Alleged Neglect
Gjeloshaj’s complaint comes after Tuzi, a municipality of about 15,000 mainly Albanian residents on the outskirts of Podgorica, was left out of this year’s state investment plan. He argued that the omission will slow local infrastructure projects. Tuzi had prepared a 5.8-million-euro budget under the previous government’s development strategy, but the new cabinet announced on 31 March a nationwide spending cut of 170 million euros. “We warned the government this could slow our local projects, but we didn’t get any feedback. This shows the government is working in an organised manner for the collapse of the municipality of Tuzi,” he said.
Earlier Clashes With the Government
The Tuzi mayor has already clashed with the new administration over COVID-19 restrictions. On 25 February he joined local citizens blocking the main road to Albania, accusing Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapić and Deputy PM Dritan Abazović of pressuring the ruling coalition in Tuzi. Prosecutors later filed charges against him for breaching public-health measures, while Krivokapić accused him of provoking tensions.
A Multi-Ethnic State Under Strain
Montenegro, which formed a new government on 4 December after opposition blocs narrowly ousted the long-ruling Democratic Party of Socialists, is unusual in the Balkans for not having a single ethnic majority: about 45 percent of citizens identify as Montenegrin, 29 percent as Serb and around 5 percent as Albanian. Tuzi is governed by an ethnic Albanian coalition and the Bosniak Party, both in opposition at the state level.
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