Good morning! Any government with autocratic tendencies looks to co-opt the elites and masses. The elites are co-opted by corruption and functions, the masses by clientelism and social benefits. Judging by these criteria, this government is moving in that direction. Here are a few more reasons why this is going in the wrong direction.
How long is this likely to last?
Leaders with non-democratic tendencies naturally despise democracy. Democracy is of no value to them. Although they live on votes, and they like to turn citizens into impersonal “people”, i.e. the mass, which is devoid of all individuality, they despise those same people. And, to be frank, the people, if we see them as an impersonal mass that serves only for easier management, should be despised. But they despise those same people not because they want to invest in the development of citizens as conscious and free bearers of sovereignty, but because they buy those same people with little money.
They buy them with social pays, mass discounts and price reductions, artificial salary boosts, cheap apartments and overpriced social policies.
Political parties like these in our country, whose management narrowly boils down to their leader, are only a means of arbitrary co-optation of the elite. In other words, there is no freedom to choose and be chosen, it’s all about delegation. Citizens are boiled down to a virtual show of hands in an almost plebiscite vote for election lists.
The leader of the party thus chooses who he will appoint to which position, at his own discretion, which is often conditioned by loyalty and nothing else. There is no meritocracy, no institution, which would produce, implement and control the rules for electing people to positions. The will of the party leader has the force of law.
Thus, the parties in Montenegro have become gatekeepers of democracy, preventing free elections, like some kind of bouncers in front of some kind of exclusive club.
That’s exactly the problem. Exclusion instead of inclusion. Co-optation, as the arbitrary delegation of power, has become a substitute for inclusion, which is contitio sine qua non of liberal democracy. Inclusion of the minority in decision-making processes, as a preventive measure against the tyranny of the majority.
Autocracy is a crime in which everyone, both the elites and masses, are included by co-optation. Everyone is bribed and everyone is complicit.
Until one moment. And that moment is conditioned by limited resources. The budget is not an inexhaustible source, and every government knows it. Someone sometimes has help from the outside, the influx of direct foreign investments, rich financiers. Someone has natural resources. Someone is laundering money for transnational organized crime gangs. But it all has an expiration date.
Montenegro has nothing, and that nothing will disappear soon. We will take and squeeze what we have until the very end, and there are already plans to borrow the voting mass from Serbia in order to ensure the stability and longevity of the government.
Apart from direct rent, the leaders co-opt the masses with propaganda promises of a better and happier future. That’s why many people fall so easily for new parties. Expectations rise and culminate in the first elections. But as time passes, the enchanted become more and more disillusioned, and the government loses support. Those who are more democratic leave the baton to the next in the elections, and those who are more persistent become inclined to violence. The DPS handed over the baton in 2020 peacefully, I’m afraid we won’t get rid of Andrija Mandic’s government so easily.
That’s all for today. Enjoy the rest of your day.
Best regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM observer and columnist
(The opinions and views of our columnists aren’t necessarily those of the CdM news team)
