By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist
What do the mayor of Niksic, Kovacevic, and the minister of education, Vojinovic, have in common?
A lot, I can tell you. Among other things, the tendency to discriminate. With Kovacevic, it is implicit and ideological. The fact that Kovacevic likes the Chetniks and the songs in which “bulas” lament does not make him a discriminator. But his ideology is discriminatory. Actually, it’s a euphemism. To say that the Chetnik ideology is “discriminatory” is like someone pouring city sewage into a mountain stream and then announcing that, by analyzing the samples, certain amounts of bacteria were found in the water that do not naturally belong to that ecosystem.
By the way, let me ask you something… And why are “bulas” lamenting in the song that many of our fellow citizens love so passionately? Maybe their husband, brother, son was killed, maybe they were raped – war brings these things. These are difficult things that cause great suffering in people. Why, if he is not a sadist, would someone enjoy the suffering of another human being – because the song we are talking about explicitly describes suffering: it – suffering, is what makes its listeners and singers happy. Because that other is the enemy? And what kind of patriarchal, mustachioed heroes are “bulas”, i.e. women, i.e. civilian enemies?
When it comes to Vojinovic, on the other hand, discrimination is explicit. This man simply does everything he can to harm the Faculty of Montenegrin Language and Culture (FCJK) and the professors of that high institution.
What else do Kovacevic and Vojinovic have in common? Both of them do wrong and present it as a principled action. Vojinovic is looking to harm people from FCJK in every possible way. And in doing so, he refers to the law.
Now… If we are done with that nonsense about the “rule of law” as an ideal, let’s state the obvious: whatever is written in the law, it means both. And the third. As it suits the one who is in power. And it’s not just here. It’s the same in the middle of America. If it were not, interpreting the same laws, reading the same paper, one composition of the Supreme Court would not have guaranteed, and the other overturned the rights to abortion. What does this tell us: the law says what the ruling ideology reads in it. I want to tell you: if Vojinovic’s discrimination against FCJK is decided by Vojinovic’s courts, and all in accordance with “positive Montenegrin legislation”, Adnan and his team could end up in long-term forced labor.
Vojinovic takes the position of a guard in the camp: he just does his job and abides by the law. He has nothing against the people from the FCJK, just as the camp guard has nothing against the people he keeps in barbed wire.
What else do Kovacevic and Vojinovic have in common?
Among other things, untouchability. Neither one nor the other will bear the consequences for what they do. On the contrary; it will only make their careers better.
What else do they have in common? How about trying to specify what they don’t have in common. It will be shorter.
