By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist
If Zdravko Krivokapic was a comedian, like Sacha Baron Cohen, and Zdravko Krivokapic, the Prime Minister of Montenegro, his character, like Borat Cohen, his success would be indisputable and, I dare say, global. Zdravko Krivokapic would be popular for the same reasons for which Borat is popular: a bizarre character with strange, often charmingly stupid views; from a small country located east of the so-called “civilization”, about which the Western viewer knows nothing, and is therefore suitable to learn all the power of his prejudices; a white person, a man, facially hairy, essentially white trash, that is, one to whom, even in an age of declining political correctness, cultural-racist ridicule of supposedly civilized people can be handed over…
But it’s not. Yet, this man, this Borat, this Borat from Ostrog, is really the prime minister of this country.
Everything that could be funny – so more or less everything that this man says and does – stops being ridiculous. Unless you have a really, but really lavish, I would say: superstitious sense of black humor, which includes your ability to sincerely laugh at the worst trouble and misery that befalls you.
If a big Hollywood studio made a film about the Prime Minister of Montenegro ten years ago who looks, walks, keeps his feet in X, drinks, licks altars, kisses dead bodies sent to Happy Hunting Ground by a highly contagious, deadly virus, speaks, thinks and rules identically as Zdravko Krivokapic, let’s be realistic, we would find ourselves offended – similar to how Cohen’s “Borat” insulted the citizens of Kazakhstan.
And our resentment, in its essence, and in its details, would be feigned, because many things are false in our country. Because we, and by “we” I mean the citizens of this country and that will never be forgotten, no matter how much we later ironed out history, elected Borat as Prime Minister. “Well, we didn’t, actually” one might say, “but he was chosen by Amfilohije in Ostrog, as his last gift to Montenegro, which he loved so much that he put a useful idiot at its head”. “Yes,” I would have to say then, “but we did not elect Parliament in the elections, but Amfilohije, so that he, not Parliament – appointed the prime minister and it was the only logical solution.”
As it is logical in a Borat way, Krivokapic claims that he is not bound by the decisions of Parliament – since it did not even elect him. And the one who elected him is no longer alive, so Zdravko, what can we do, the logic is inexorable, it does not oblige anything. It is also the answer to the authentic Montenegrin (re)version of Heidegger’s famous question, which reads: why is it nothing and not something? Because nothing, so the thing that doesn’t exist, is something, that is, the thing that exists, which has become nothing, while something is nothing that has become something. And God, who is everything, therefore also something and nothing, is the one who exists. And then some rebel against religious education in schools.
Anyway: Zdravko, who is not obliged to nothing, which means that he is not obliged to something, gave an interview on Twitter, which is practically impossible to treat as a public appearance of the leader of any country. If what he was blabbering about was written by a team of screenwriters, it would be for the Oscars. This way, it’s not even for crying. Because nothing, just like Moscow, does not believe in tears.
Zdravko is turning this country into nothing, and he will succeed in that because not only is nothing stopping him, but no one.
Neither anyone nor anything can take seriously the man who claims that his son bought a plot – which Zdravko, as he points out, has not even seen, probably because he is spiritual and despises material things – bought for 20k euros he received at the wedding, plus 60k received from the employer. If it seems to you that you can still believe it, precisely because it is absurd, here’s a simple question: what didn’t a boss give you or anyone you know or don’t know, €60,000 to settle down, sorry: to get the land?
Because no one and nothing, without wetting their underwear with laughter, can follow what will be called Zdravko’s logical sequence in the future: “I think we could have done a lot more, but in relation to the context in which we were, I think we have done maybe more than we could. But it can always be better”. This is worth repeating.
a) It was possible to do much more.
b) We did more than possible (so we couldn’t do more, just less)
c) But we can always do more.
If Wittgenstein, the author of the “Logical-Philosophical Treatise”, had not committed suicide in 1951, jumping from a boat in Chesapeake Bay, he would have died last night, following Zdravko on Twitter.
And that, along with several or one sentence by Marko Miljanov and “The Ray of the Microcosm”, about which this time, I will refrain, I will not say anything, would be our only contribution to the history of philosophy.
So someone wonders: how is it possible to have Borat as prime minister?
