Good morning! A month is still left until the Niksic elections, and the campaign is slowly heating up. The DF is starting from a position of power, and its coalition partners at the state and local levels are acting with a big handicap – the coalition with Marko Kovacevic, who, along with Vranes, is one of the most extreme pro-Russian-Serbian politicians in Montenegro. The opposition looks refreshed and has a chance to deal the most serious blow to the authorities after 2020.
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Battle for Niksic 2.0
You remember how Vucic’s media were fiercely interested in the last elections in Niksic. After sending activists and money across the border and calling the local elections in Niksic the “Battle for Niksic” on their television channels, they succeeded in installing Marko Kovacevic, the young hope of Andrija Mandic’s party, as the head of the city, known for genocidal threats and polarizing narratives.
With the help of URA and the Democrats, of course. We’ll see how much this pays off for URA and the Democrats in this town. The announcements say that the series of failures of these two parties will continue. The same is true when it comes to the prime minister’s party, which has been unrepresented in this city until now, and is now led by Dr Zoran Mrkic, who had a very interesting political path, from the Serbian nationalist DF and the New Serbian Democracy, through Rasko Konjevic’s SDP, to PES. I think this is also a ticket for failure, just like it happened in Budva, but we’ll see.
I am not fully familiar with the details of the local political scene, but I see the DPS going safe with Muratovic, who has grown cautiously and steadily within the party structures in recent years. The coalition of SDP, SD and LPCG cleverly pushed the controversial and unlikeable Zirojevic into the background and entered the elections with a non-party candidate. It is Radojicic, who was once in Positive Montenegro, recognized as a citizen-oriented activist, who was a critic of the DPS government in that city.
The last population census showed that Niksic is still a Montenegrin city, in terms of identity and ideology. We will see if and how much it means in the elections. Are the people of Niksic fed up with the rule of Marko Kovacevic and Metodije, or did have sinecures and sinecures done their part.
Niksic is the second largest city in Montenegro, a former industrial center, and the largest municipality in the former Yugoslavia by territory. In addition, Niksic has another important symbolism for DPS, as the city where the former president of Montenegro and the current honorary president of DPS comes from.
The potential result of the parties in the state government should be the last wake-up call. Intuition says that their result will be bad, but let’s wait for the results.
If it is good, it will mean that they are free to continue even stronger with everything they do. If they continue to fall and experience a fiasco like in other cities, they should seriously prepare for the next parliamentary elections, whether tomorrow or in three years. For PES, the result will be a sign of whether the coalition with the DF and the Democrats is good or bad for them. What pleases them in Berane, will not work in Niksic or other areas in Montenegro. The 30 August supplies have been used up, and these from the Europe Now programme are also running low.
That’s it for today. We wish you a pleasant rest of the day.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM analyst and columnist
(Columnists’ opinions and views are not necessarily those of the CdM editorial staff)
