Croatia’s prime minister, Mr Andrej Plenković, confirmed on Wednesday that they’d agreed with the Independent Democratic Serb Party and representatives of the Serbian majority in CRO on the presence of deputy prime minister, Mr Boris Milošević, at the celebration marking the anniversary of Operation Storm in the town of Knin on 5 August. He will be the first Serb ever to attend the ceremony in Knin, writes Pobjeda daily.
“We think it’s good and useful, primarily for the relations in the Croatian society, relations towards the Serbian majority in Croatia, towards the recent past and is a strong message of Croatia to all partners that are watching how Croatia is functioning nowadays,” Mr Plenković said in an interview for RTL.
CURRENT SILENCE
This news would almost not cause any special media attention in Montenegro, as the celebration of Operation Storm and its attendees is an internal matter of the Croatian sovereign state. But even the current silence is telling enough: it points out to double standards of domestic, as well as of Belgrade “fighters and defenders of rights of all Serbs, wherever they are”.
There’s almost no reaction from Vučić’s major spokesmen on this matter – Đačić, Vulin, Stefanović – and neither we could hear anything from the on-duty quasi political observers who are close to the Serbian president and are always present in the media. Serbia’s President, Mr Aleksandar Vučić, didn’t comment on it as well.
For now, only Mr Milorad Dodik had something to say, telling that “it’s unacceptable that a Serb goes to the celebration of Operation Storm on behalf of the Serbian community thus giving it legitimacy.”
As for Montenegro, there’s a specific, kinda weird silence concerning this event. Political representatives of Serbs in our country remain silent, as well as some NGOs which regularly have strong reactions to similar things. Just as if they were waiting for the sign of a ‘great conductor’ or some of his assistants from Belgrade.
ALL THE FUSS ABOUT IT
A range of common attacks then followed from representatives of the pro-Serbian parties in MNE, who fiercely condemned such a “shameful act”, “a betrayal of Serbian interests”, “putting a finger to brotherly Serbia’s eyes”…
Let us remind of all the fuss that those same people from Belgrade and Podgorica used to make when a Nikšić resident, Mr Ivan Mašulović, our military attaché in Croatia, attended this ceremony in early August 2018 in Knin, and now are silent about the presence of the first Serb at the celebration marking the anniversary of Operation Storm. The Democratic Front then required an urgent extraordinary session of the parliament due to “a scandalous presence of a representative of the Army of Montenegro at the ceremony marking the anniversary of this criminal operation”. In the end, they didn’t manage to collect 27 signatories of the opposition MPs in order to be able to convene an extraordinary parliament’s session, as the Democrats, the URA Civic Movement and the SDP “betrayed them”…
