By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist
Whether Montenegrins, Serbs, independence supporters, unionists, whether Albanians, Bosniaks, whether they prefer Seka or Stoja, the Beatles or the Stones — our people believe in drafts. They run through deadly rooms all day long and close the windows as if invisible snipers ready to pierce your heart with a bullet of wind are lurking there.
Maybe they’re right. The world is a hostile environment: everyone who is alive is deeply behind enemy lines. It seems to me that there is nothing that can’t kill you, and that certainly applies to drafts, just as much as to Jamb dice or that silly purple flower that grows in spring, and then children are taken to the mudflats to pick it, and you have to wash their muddy shoes that they will wear throughout their schooling, which they will later remember when they become competent leaders and examples of excellence, living proof that exceptional intelligence and education must result in success and a high place in the political hierarchy.
Worse yet: not only can everything that exists kill you, but everything exists only to kill you. There are countless ways to lose your head, and only one way to survive. None of us matters in the so-called “big picture.” But when you count everything that can destroy you, from bacteria to lightning, you are tempted to think that so-called nature believes the so-called world would be a better place without you in it.
(For readers of Becir Vukovic’s poetry: I don’t mean this seriously; the above paragraphs are irony and sarcasm. Or maybe I do?).
Whether Montenegrins, Serbs, independence supporters, unionists; whether Albanians, Bosniaks, whether they prefer Seka or Stoja, the Beatles or the Stones — our people believe in the European Union. Since Andrija Mandic has been handling Montenegro’s European affairs, the number of Montenegrin citizens in favour of our country’s EU membership has reached almost 110%. Andrija and MC Yo-nikije have turned not only the staunch Eurosceptics and Putin supporters, Draza and Pavle Djurisic, but even themselves into pro-Western Europeans.
There is no spot left in these proud hills that doesn’t embrace the European spirit: Even when the pig farts, it’s like a wind at our backs. There is no atrocity here that won’t be justified by “EU integration.” Pro-fascist revision of history, that is, brazen lying; disgusting, feeble-minded assimilation as a political-church-security project; the nastiest political compromises and capitulations, total abandonment of even the semblance of ethics in politics — all of this will be justified by the need to “become part of the great European family of nations” as soon as possible. In the new Montenegro, EU integration is what false, lucrative patriotism was in the DPS era: the last refuge of scoundrels.
The problem is this. Neither the fact that every dead, living, and unborn citizen of Montenegro supports EU membership, nor that “Montenegro is the regional leader in EU integration,” says anything truthful about Montenegrin society.
The official policy on joining the European Union is: standards first, then status. Aha. And which standards have we actually reached?
Regarding standards, whether they accept us in 2026 or 2036, we will be at a much lower standard than we were in 1986.
Therefore, the solution for our EU admission might lie in the past: why not ask to be admitted retroactively? So we don’t have to struggle—neither we nor they. Because who will now meet their standards? And who will even reach ours, which we have spat on?
So: let them acknowledge that we reached the standards back in the 1970s. That even in 1986, when everything was already going downhill fast, we had better healthcare, better judiciary, better police, a more enlightened political elite, less corruption and crime, and, if you want, even more democracy and free market than now. Because just as power then was a monopoly of the Communist Party, now it is a monopoly of the church parties.
Political struggle has always come down to breaking through the party organs, then and now. Except: if political struggle within the Party was like Harvard, political struggle within kleptocratic parties is like a private hospitality school in Surdulica. As for the free market, it didn’t exist then, nor does it today. The only question is when it was less present: then, during the state monopoly, or now, under the reign of pluralism of private-national monopolies?
The fact that Montenegro is the “regional leader in European integration” speaks about the quality of life and the quality of the state as much as the fact that a certain club is the leader of the second football league in Iceland. “We are the best in the region” is actually a nice way of saying “We are the worst in Europe.”
Does anyone really believe in comparisons of our countries to Germany or Belgium, for example? Or do comparisons between us and Mexico, for instance, hold up much better?
In my relatively rich archives, I found an article about a prison riot in Monterrey. There, in northern Mexico, a small-scale war broke out some time ago. Forty-nine prisoners died.
The news reported: “Authorities of the Nuevo Leon province announced that, upon police entry into the prison after the riot, mini-fridges, air conditioners, cable and digital TVs, and aquariums were found in the cells. They discovered 280 stalls where inmates could buy various goods. Authorities used heavy machinery to bring tons of smuggled furniture and other goods into the prison yard.”
First, let’s pay attention to the fact that—the police entered the prison. The prison should, shouldn’t it, be a strictly controlled space? The police should know at all times what happens inside the prison. Yet, they only found out what was happening once they actually entered.
The Monterrey prison, I’m afraid, is a good metaphor for our countries. And the so-called rule of law was in operation there too. The police and courts populated the prison with the corrupt and organised criminals. There was a free market. The discovery of 280 stalls with mixed goods testifies to that. These stalls, like the shelves of our stores, were full of imported goods. So, there was import and importers—because everything sold in the prison was imported, more or less, like here.
Although there was an administration in the prison, that is, authority, the real masters were criminals. They were the dominant social force. The society itself was, as ours is, very stratified. Social differences were enormous, as with us: some had only a hard bed and thin soup, others had all the luxury. In prison, as in our societies, religious freedoms existed.
“The police destroyed hundreds of altars and statues, some life-sized, dedicated to the Mexican folk saint Santa Muerte (holy death), who is revered by drug dealers and social outcasts but not recognised by the Roman Catholic Church,” the news read.
In prisons, as we know, people also vote: inmates, like us, have political freedoms. There is freedom of speech in prison: when you’re in prison, you are free to criticise the political system as much as you want. Why not? What can they do to you—arrest you?
Okay, you get what I mean. I just have one more thing to add. The prison works not only as a metaphor for our countries but for every country. Still, as every prisoner knows, it matters which prison you end up in. Just as The Hague — not to mention all those European prisons with a human touch, which are much more livable than Konik — better than Monterrey, so too is the EU better than Belarus.
It’s not much, I agree. But while we dream of a better world, it’s nice to have heating, clean bedding, and three good meals a day.
Freedom is, after all, overrated.
(Columnists’ opinions and views are not necessarily those of the CdM editorial team)
