By Andrej Nikoladis, CdM columnist
At the end of Coppola’s “Apocalypse Today” (it would have been the best war film, if Klimov had not made “Come and See”), in a long monologue uttered by Brando, his Colonel Kurtz describes the moment when he realized that America could not win in Vietnam. He talks about the village where the American army entered with him at the head. The army, which was killing the Vietnamese with bullets of all calibers and napalm, decided to demonstrate humanity so it vaccinated children. The next day, they found a pile of severed children’s limbs in the village: the Viet Cong had torn off every hand that had been injected with the American vaccine.
That kind of defiance, that kind of victory is unacceptable to me. Children are not here to fight our battles. We are here not to bequeath our defeats and revenge for them to the children. There are no winners in a village full of crippled children. I refuse to choose between such freedom and slavery.
It is equally unacceptable to me, forgive my French, the whoring of the sovereignist parties: SDP in Cetinje, SD in Ulcinj, as well as DPS with Dritan’s government, which they burdened the citizens of Montenegro with their votes.
In yesterday’s column, named Are You There?, Stefan Todorovic asked not only a reasonable, but also a necessary question:
“If it is clear to the entire Montenegrin public that the current new-old parliamentary majority (Democratic Front, Democrats, URA and other satellites) is carrying out a constitutional coup, dismantling state institutions, collapsing state companies and distancing Montenegro from the European Union, drowning it in the Moscow-oriented Serbian World, the question arises why the sovereignist political parties are still in any deals and arrangements with those anti-state elements? Or maybe all of the above is not true, so the sovereignist political elite is deceiving us? Is it a fight for Montenegro or a fight for a better positioning of the sovereignist parties in some future negotiations and deals in which suddenly URA, Democrats or Europe are now not traitors, in addition to the standard traitors from the Democratic Front?”
There is a certain difference between citizens and remote-controlled cars: people are not push buttons, and the sovereignist parties will feel it on their own skin.
After Joanikije was enthroned in Cetinje by helicopter of the North Atlantic Alliance and thus became the first Montenegrin NATO metropolitan, while the tear gas was dragging like a venomous snake through the Cetinje valley, I was approached by two crying old people, a married couple. They were not crying because of the tear gas, but because of the humiliation that they did not deserve. What is this, they asked me? Are they playing with us? We said goodbye to our children and grandchildren and went to Belvedere to die, they told me. Those two old people were not afraid of death. But, like all honest people, they were terrified of humiliation.
What do the sovereignist political elite think: that, in order to please Western embassies, citizens will be peaceful in their homes while Dritan presents the entire sacred heritage of Montenegro to Serbia; that they will be calm while Montenegro is immersed in the Open Balkans, which will, not even five years later, have a common parliament and clear contours of the new state union; and that they will rush to the street when it suits their party interests, which have long been contrary to the interests of democratic, pro-Western Montenegro?
What’s next, pros? If they give you elections, in which you will be defeated, with routine indignation you will ignore the Open Balkans, American child?
And what will we do after the elections? Spajic or the “healthy wing of URA” will fuck Vucic off and join a coalition with you? That’s your plan? Where do you buy mushrooms, let us know?
After Montenegro’s entire sacral heritage was stolen; after, without a referendum or any, even pretended democratic procedure, we are drawn into the new state community; after Serbia, as it has already done culturally, spiritually and politically, finally economically occupies us – what exactly, apart from empty sovereignty and your asses, do you expect us to defend?
Either the justified, just protests that are happening in Podgorica will turn into a rebellion against the Open Balkans, the last red line that the treacherous government has not crossed, or the end is just ahead of us – both the protests and Montenegrin independence. That’s the last red line. Anything beyond that is a flatline: the clinical death of independence.
If you allow this, if you also make a “pragmatic compromise”…
The elite is worse than the crowd, Mirko Kovac would say.
