April 6, 2019 - The eighth protest under the slogan Odupri Se - 97,000 will be held on 6 April at 7 pm on the platform in front of the Assembly of Montenegro in Podgorica.
"We are leaving the Square of Independence and approaching institutions to continue with the actions of their encirclement and pressure. We will be enough to occupy the entire space in front of the buildings of the President, Assembly, Central Bank, and during the protest walks we will visit the building of the Supreme State Prosecutor's Office. All these institutions and many others must be released, and the competent authorities must bear the responsibility for their misdeeds. The only way to make up for this is our number and persistence, " said the protest organisers.
They urge students to "make a hunch in protests", retirees "to give an example of proud persistence," workers "to loudly fight for their rights," and civil servants to be relieved of pressure and fight for the right for professional performance of their duties. Unemployed and young people who want to build the future in other countries are calling for here, together, to make a system in which we can live normally.
"Our actions already bring fruit. Even those we ask for resignations call for dialogue, delay of rising electricity, increasing the minimum labour price, abandoning projects where their families and privileged individuals would make profits, but we will not be fooled! With them headed, those are all short-term and cosmetic changes. It is up to us to make the essentials for a fundamental change of system and a life worthy of a free citizen, " the movement Odupri Se points out.
The Student Initiative and this Saturday invite students and all young people to join in the struggle for freedom and a better society. Students are dissatisfied with the educational system that is among the worst in Europe, unemployment rate and partitocracy, massive young people leaving the country in search of a better life, a prominent social gap between citizens and non-transparent work of the "captured" University of Montenegro. The Montenegrin Student Initiative organises a gathering at St Petar Cetinjski Square at 5.30 pm, after which the plan is that students join to the other citizens on the 8th Odupri Se 97,000 protest.
Protests in Montenegro last for two months. At Saturday's gatherings in Podgorica several thousand citizens are standing up for demands for resignation of President of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, Montenegrin Prime Minister Dusko Markovic, Supreme State Prosecutor Ivica Stankovic, Chief Special Prosecutor Milivoje Katnić, Director of the Anti-Corruption Agency Sreten Radonjić, and the management of RTCG, Montenegrin Public Media Service.
At the last protest gathering held in Podgorica on Saturday, 30 March, the delegates of the opposition parliamentary parties in the Assembly of Montenegro signed with protesters the Agreement on Future. The Agreement should serve as a platform for a peaceful transition in the direction of democratising the society and ensuring the conditions for maintaining “the first fair and free elections in Montenegro.”
