Brnabic: ”There'll be no session on lithium during extraordinary session due to procrastination of opposition”

"It was important for me to address the citizens in this way and explain what is happening in the Parliament at this moment and why there will not be time to discuss lithium. They did everything to delay this session, to waste time and lead to end the time for the extraordinary session," said Brnabić.

Given that the regular session of the Serbian Parliament starts on the 1st of October, the opposition is trying to prevent the discussion from happening.

"I received this law from the opposition on September 10th, and I already organized the Collegium on the 18th. I said that we must have the first extraordinary session on budget rebalancing. We started working immediately. We started on Monday, in order to finish the rebalancing earlier. That wasn't enough either. We didn't even get to the 80th of the 146th amendments," Brnabić said.

During Ana Brnabić's speech, Aleksandar Jovanović Ćuta interrupted Speaker of the Assembly. He came to the Parliament carrying the inscription "lies".

Brnabić asked him to move away, which he did, and assessed that the members of the opposition obviously imagine parliamentarism that way and that everything seems to be allowed to them.

"What you have seen now is obstruction, which they have been doing for 6 days. It is their way of preventing the citizens from hearing the truth. Because they do not want the citizens to hear the lies that they presented in the bill," said Brnabić.

"They used every second, they had nothing to say about the budget rebalancing, we listened to the usual platitudes. This morning there were 32 members of the opposition, if we had wanted to obstruct, we would not have had a quorum. Those whose mouths are full of lithium ban did everything not to debate about it," said Brnabić.

"We do not run away from any topic and we are responsible to the citizens. I scheduled and held a collegium for June 14, at which I said we must discuss lithium. When we had the first extraordinary session in July of this year, when we talked about the declaration from the All-Serbian Parliament, I asked for the transcript, the word lithium and Rio Tinto were mentioned 534 times. Once again, the citizens must know that they did everything in their power not to discuss this bill," she said.

"We will absolutely insist that the session with this agenda be held. We will not allow them to hide this. So that everyone can see what the consequences would be if this were adopted," said Brnabić.

Let's remind you that today MPs are debating the rebalancing of the budget, while an extraordinary session on lithium is scheduled for 14:00.

However, the members of the opposition are obstructing the work of the Assembly in every possible way, and are trying to prevent the discussion on lithium from taking place, even though they themselves requested it.