Good morning! Yesterday, Dajkovic hung a picture of his delegation at the election in Russia and the Putin Youth summit in Sochi together with the Russian ambassador. It would have been nothing new, if in the picture with the Russian ambassador Maslenikov, they hadn’t put a fake Montenegrin tricolour flag in front of them, and in this way they all participated in the desecration of the national symbols of Montenegro.
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A few more words about tricolour flag
Tricolour flag was undoubtedly the Montenegrin flag. It was used occasionally even before it was declared the official flag in 1905. We can lie to each other that it was a product of the French Revolution, but I don’t believe that King Nikola, as a convinced autocrat, was a bit too enchanted by the ideals of Brumaire and citizenship. The tricolour flag was taken as a symbol of Serbia, and it became that the moment when the sultan demanded that the red-white-blue tricolour flag, which the Serbs chose together with the Croats, be replaced by red-blue-white.
Regardless, the tricolour flag has become a symbol of Montenegro. It is also on the most important of all Montenegrin decorations, the Christmas Uprising monument, based on which the Gaetusa flag was created in the 1990s. Therefore, this flag is the historical flag of Montenegro and we should not and must not delete it. It was the flag of not only the partisans of the FR Montenegro and the Republic of Montenegro. It was also used by Montenegrin nationalists Sekula Drljevic and Krsto Zrnov Popovic during cooperation with the Italian occupier and during the declaration of clientelist independent Montenegro in 1941.
But is this the same flag used by Serbian nationalists in Montenegro today? Let’s make the answer short- it is not. Just as Ireland and Italy have similar flags, or Monaco and Poland the same, that one flag does not mean the same thing to them. For some it is a symbol of one country, for others of another country. Thus, the tricolour flag did not mean the same to King Nikola, Sekula Drljevic or today, Andrija Mandic.
The tricolour flag used by Dajkovic is a special story. It was made by SNP as a hybrid of the restyled Montenegrin flag that we use today as the national flag and the old royal tricolour flag of King Nikola, only with a white-silver coat of arms.
Serbian nationalists and neo-Chetniks in Montenegro took the tricolour flag and fly it in order to discredit belonging to Montenegro by placing it in the context of the province of Belgrade, i.e. the province of the province of Moscow. They would prefer to turn the tricolour flag upside down and declare Montenegro a Russian governorate, but since that idea has not yet matured, they use tricks with the “Montenegrin tricolour flag” as an alternative.
They are not the first to resort to such ideological mimicry. Extreme right-wingers in Germany have adapted to the times they live in, and instead of the flag they would actually fly, so as to avoid risking getting into prison, they use the imperial war flag of the German Empire. Thus, Dajkovic and the entire religious processions movement, instead of flying the black flags “unification or death”, which are really close to their hearts, now use these hybrid tricolour flags as an alternative. In this way, unfortunately, they also managed to make a great deal of Montenegrin public sickened by the authentic tricolour flag. The same is the case with the Cyrillic alphabet, which is no less our script.
Dajkovic and the others are Montenegrin citizens and have the right to do whatever they want, as long as it does not violate Montenegrin laws. Foreigners like Maslenikov and Serbian media clowns like Jovana Jeremic are another thing. They must respect Montenegrin symbols, otherwise they should be escorted out and banned from entering the country. If there was a state, it would act like that.
That’s it for today. We wish you a pleasant rest of the day.
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)
