United opposition represents a mission impossible on the Montenegrin political scene, so the Democratic Front (DF) will remain empty-handed in its synchronized action attempt.
“Three opposition parties rejected DF’s initiative the same day the political alliance announced its call. Thus, it was formally demonstrated that no united opposition run in the upcoming elections is possible. Such a thing was expected after numerous accusations among the opposition in the previous period,” the director of the Civic Alliance (GA) Boris Raonic told CdM.
Now when the state of relations within the opposition are known, Raonic believes that they should work on establishing communication and trust in order to facilitate cooperation in some other election cycles.
“The opposition will have several presidential candidates, who will lead campaigns in the local elections in 13 municipalities scheduled for the spring of 2019. As part of this campaign, DF will, of course, launch a series of new protests. Socio-economic situation and a bad image created by the Special state Prosecutor’s Office (SDT) will contribute to the cause. But I do not expect that there will be mass protests ,” Raonic told CdM.
As a reminder, the Social Democratic Party of Montenegro was first to respond to DF’s initiative to unite the opposition and come out with a single candidates list and one presidential candidate at the next elections.
Deputy leader of SDP Almir Rebronja, said that because of the large and fundamental differences between SDP and DF, cooperation is not possible.
The Democrats do not want even to communicate with DF.
“It is extremely hypocritical to invite those who you referred to as sects, criminals, deceivers and collaborators of the regime until recently. We are continuing knocking down DPS politically and working hard on the ground. Therefore, so we are not interested in the activities of the DF’s leaders,” they said.
SNP leader Vladimir Jokovic points out that the opposition needs to find the strength to bring together behind a common presidential candidate whom everyone would support, and that the potential candidate has a great chance to beat any representative of the ruling coalition.
Nevertheless, as Jokovic pointed out, the success of the Democratic Front’s call for the joint running in the elections has been called into question at the very beginning as some parliamentary parties have already declared themselves not to support such an initiative.
URA Civic movement also believes that a common opposition candidate would be the most serious opponent to the DPS’s presidential candidate. However, the movement emphasises that it is almost impossible to speak about common lists without overcoming numerous issues between the two poles of the opposition political scene.
And when DF became aware of the failure of its initiative, DF gave in and announced that it was ready to accept other proposals.
One thing is certain – the stories about opposition’s united running in the upcoming elections are predestined to failure, and this is clear to everyone, except – the opposition.
