Montenegro's Bosniaks Thwart Njegos National Holiday

The Montenegrin government informed parliament on Wednesday that it will withdraw a bill on public holidays which was to include a state holiday to mark the birth in 1813 of Njegos, a bishop, prince and poet who ruled Montenegro in the 19th century.

The move came after the Bosniak Party, a member of the ruling coalition, said it would not vote for the proposal to celebrate November 13, Njegos's birthday, as a national holiday.

Without the support of the Bosniak Party, the legislation could not secure a majority in parliament.

The party's senior official, Adnan Muhovic, who is also mayor of the small majority-Bosniak town of Petnjica in the north of the country, welcomed the move.

"I want to share the pleasure with all of you," Muhovic told locals via the Petnjica radio station.

This was the second failed attempt by the Montenegrin government to declare Njegos' birthday a holiday.

In October 2013, then Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic's cabinet also proposed a new law but was forced to withdraw after opposition from the country's Bosniaks, who disdain the approving description of an alleged mass execution of Muslims in his poem 'The Mountain Wreath'.

The Bosniak Party said at the time that certain ideas in Njegos's works "were used to justify genocide against the Muslim community in both the 19th and 20th centuries in Montenegro and in the region". 

The latest proposed amendments to the law on state holidays were endorsed last Friday by the Parliamentary Committee on the Political System, the Judiciary and the Administration, by MPs from the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists, led by former PM Djukanovic.

The envisaged that November 13 would be marked as Njegos's day, but also as the day of Montenegrin culture....