Good morning! Three notable court rulings in the past few days should seriously concern us. The first is the case involving Mandic’s nephew, which amounts to collective gaslighting. The second is an acquittal for the attack on journalists during the unveiling of a monument to Pavle Djurisic. The third is a ruling ordering MP Maja Vucelic, in a first-instance decision, to pay €2,000 to Milan Knezevic for causing him fear and psychological distress.
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DF’s judiciary?
We all know what the judiciary was like during the DPS era. Medenica reminds us of it almost daily with recordings she sends to the Democrats. However, instead of freeing institutions after 2020, what happened was merely a handover. The Constitutional Court—or rather its majority—is close to DF structures, particularly those of Milan Knezevic and Predrag Bulatovic. We’re now seeing a conflict between Pavlicic and the dismissed president of the Court of Appeal. I haven’t gone deeply into that case, but it’s also very symptomatic.
Even more telling are these three rulings, which clearly point to political influence by New Serbian Democracy and the Democratic People’s Party over the judiciary. The first development was the complete dismissal of the narrative about the attempted coup under Russian sponsorship in 2016.
Then there was the situation where media reported that Mandic’s nephew shot and wounded people from an official vehicle. Now we’re being told it didn’t happen—as if everyone in Montenegro were fools.
Then there’s the case of photojournalists from Pobjeda and Vijesti in Zaostro, who were nearly lynched in the presence of police. Now, if we believe the court, that didn’t happen either. The journalists must have beaten themselves.
The strangest and potentially most dangerous case, however, involves conflict within the ruling majority. MP Maja Vucelic, one of the few Montenegrin voices in the governing coalition, became a target of Milan Knezevic, who sued her after she expressed suspicion that he was acting in coordination with Serbia’s BIA—which, as everyone knows, is true. And not only with the BIA, but also with the FSB, GRU, and Ramzan Kadyrov.
Milan Knezevic doesn’t even hide it.
But he decided to go after Maja Vucelic, an independent MP elected on the CIVIS list who supports the parliamentary majority.
Vucelic was punished by a decision from judge Ivana Zujovic. As far as I know, this is the first time an MP in Montenegro has been penalised for spoken words—and quite harshly. Those who threatened me with Kalashnikovs were fined €300.
It is obvious that DF and its patrons in Belgrade command a certain fear and respect among some judges, and that the judiciary—before and after 2020—has remained heavily influenced by politics and those in power.
What is especially worrying is that the political forces with clear influence over the judiciary are the same ones that consistently drive political instability in the country, whether for their own or others’ interests.
That’s all for today and for this week. See you again on Monday.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM analyst
(Columnists’ opinions and views do not necessarily reflect those of the CdM editorial board)
