Good morning! If this were a happy country, the desecration of symbols might be tolerated as artistic freedom, courage and protest against injustice. But this is not a happy country, and its symbols are desecrated by those who are against freedom, who are ethno-nationalists and lovers of war crimes.
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Middle-Fingered Anthem and Sky Application
Montenegro really lives a distorted reality. Reporting for not standing for the national anthem, or for disobeying it, the penalties for such behavior, should be foreign to anyone who cares about freedom and democracy. When you look at this map on Wikipedia, the countries where flag desecration is legal are among the happiest in the world. However, on the same map you can see that desecration of national and foreign flags is illegal in many EU countries.
I would be happiest if we lived in a country whose independence is questioned by no one. And especially not by those who would turn it into a province of ethnically pure Balkan micro-empires. In such a country, where ideologies and ways of organizing the state and society would be debated, I would always defend the right of a human rights activist to kneel during the anthem because of torture and police brutality, for example. I would even defend the right of an artist to burn the flag because of political protest, because of the repressive policies of some potentially authoritarian government.
But this is not that country. In this country, we have a completely twisted reality, and those who want to impose an authoritarian ethno-clerical democracy on us, do not respect the national symbols, because they are not correct and pure according to their perverse ideology.
In addition, things that they do, they don’t do with dignity, but primitively and without taste. Cowardly and insidiously.
The prime minister said recently, right before the parliamentary elections, that all this is part of the pre-election decorum. The elections have passed, and the people his party elected as mayors continue with the same practices. In Pljevlja, Vranes hangs tricolor flags bigger than the national flag, and Marko Kovacevic makes a nationalist performance for the umpteenth time. Only this time he crossed all the boundaries of good taste. And then when someone has had enough, and some individual somewhere writes some kind of nasty comment on Facebook, then Vijesti will point the spotlight on him and tell us how these are two equally dangerous nationalisms. A registrar from Facebook and two mayors of towns where there are breweries, ironworks, thermal power plants and coal mines.
I don’t know what needs to happen so that our false centrists realize that such partners are harming them. Milatovic doesn’t seem to understand that Kovacevic fingered his butt. I apologize for this vivid picture, but Kursadzije (alluding to a Serbian TV show, comedy series) deserve Kursadzije-treatment. Let me add that Milatovic’s butt was fingered exactly by Kovacevic whom he tremblingly invited to join him and stand next to him during the declaration of victory in the elections.
When will people realize that what they are doing has nothing to do with the protest against the authoritarianism of Milo Djukanovic. Punk, as Brano Mandic said. Marko Kovacevic is the mayor of the second largest city in Montenegro. People from his party run entire cities and the most powerful state enterprises in the country. He has great power in this country. What injustice is he protesting against?
This is a senselessness of the fight against authoritarianism and protest against injustice, just as this latest publication of the Sky correspondence is a senselessness of the fight against organized crime and corruption. Why? First, because that story is politically led by Dritan Abazovic and Filip Adzic, who strongly compromised themselves when it comes to these topics. Second, because journalist Jelena Jovanovic, who discredited herself with the shameful BIRN mapping of extreme-right movements, covers this topic. I am not questioning the accuracy or authenticity of the recordings here, but I am talking about the perception of a section of the public, who will not take the fight against crime and corruption seriously because of this.
It is one thing when this topic is dealt with professionally and up-to-date by people and organizations with credibility, such as Libertas Press and Olivera Lakic, it is another thing when this topic is dealt with superficially by people who have done their own best to destroy their investigative and anti-corruption credibility.
That’s it for today. See you tomorrow at the same place, at the same time.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM analyst and columnist
(The opinions and views of the authors of the columns are not necessarily those of the CdM editorial staff)
