Good morning! Montenegro is a country of ignorant and naive people. That is why it is possible to sell colorful lies to them in politics.
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Hypocrisy – Disease Most Beloved
I had other plans for today’s text, but the tweet of the recent minister and deputy leader of URA, Jovana Marovic, has provoked me to write about a devastating phenomenon in Montenegrin society – the phenomenon of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy – mixed with populism, situational moralizing, as well as the naivety and ignorance of Montenegrin citizens.
Ignorance is lack of education. Statistical data on the number of university-educated citizens, including citizens with a high school diploma, tell us that we are in a problem. So, a lesson for PM Dritan Abazovic – the problem is not the average IQ, the problem is education, that is, the lack of it.
There are exceptions when it comes to formal education. Andrej Nikolaidis is an example of that. As he says, he only saw the faculty from the outside, but Andrej is one of the most educated people I know. Far more educated than me. However, Andrej was not born educated, he compensated for his lack of formal education by educating himself. And won that game.
The second qualification I mentioned in relation to Montenegrin citizens is naivety. This is a less measurable category, but as an “argument” I always use the scene from Bulajic’s film “A Man Who Should Be Killed” and the dialogue in hell in which Montenegro is spoken of as a country of “naive people, who are constantly at war with someone”, and because that is suitable for various manipulations.
But, let’s go back to the hypocrisy, which is used by the better educated, to manipulate the naive and less educated, in order to gain their favor. For votes or just the love of the crowd. The love of the crowd is btw a hard drug, which should not be underestimated compared to greed and sick ambitions.
So, what is controversial in Marovic’s tweet? It is debatable that she shared and supported the monologue of a young lawyer from Human Rights Action, Marija Veskovic, who in youthful naivety uttered a romantic nonsense, which could be reduced to Plato’s old fallacy that society should be governed by philosophers.
Marovic has a Ph.D. diploma in political science and was a practicing politician. So, she is someone who made a conscious decision to become a party member and party official in order to become a minister and deputy prime minister. It could have been achieved in another way, but Marovic decided to enter the arena. Very quickly, she got tired of the compromises that politics brings with it, and she left the arena. She is one of the few who managed to come out of the whole story relatively unscathed and preserve her credibility and integrity.
I am not criticizing Jovana Marovic, because the thing is about the legitimate decisions of someone who knows what politics is all about. I made a similar decision myself about 15 years ago. And in a similar way came out of practicing it.
So, let me repeat – this is a completely legitimate decision by someone who knows what politics is. That is why it is surprising to support the anti-political delusions of Mrs Veskovic, that academic references and international experience should be a decisive factor for the selection of judges of the Constitutional Court. This geeky bureaucratic approach to this important issue is profoundly anti-democratic. Academic references and international experience may be a prerequisite, but politics should decide. That’s why the system was made that way. Everywhere, not only in Montenegro.
The question of electing judges of the Constitutional Court is not a question of law, but a question of politics. Because the Constitution is the legal formalization of the political agreement of a community. A good constitutional judge requires a little more than a distinguished lawyer. Just as the rule of law requires little more than a state based on justice and integrity.
The story that A students should rule the country is an old misconception that meritocracy should replace democracy. You know the arguments why the voice of a Ph.D. is equated with the voice of some “aunt from Pljevlja”. Because it is democracy and because it is the only fair one. And because it is the best of all systems, if the prefix liberal is added to it. This liberal keeps it from becoming a tyranny of the majority.
But, the text of one column is too narrow to discuss democracy.
We will be killed, therefore, not by low IQ, but by the irresponsibility of the educated, who mislead the ignorant, that there are political unicorns. And there are many ignorant people in Montenegro.
This should not discourage young people from doing everything to make this society better. But, if they are not ready for compromises and all the dirt that comes with politics, let them do academic work. Research, lectures, innovations. Let them be part of watchdog civil society organizations and thus force politicians and judges to be better.
It can be done in every sphere, even in the domain of constitutional law. And for that, for an academic career – the references mentioned by Veskovic are crucial. For the sphere of politics, politics is crucial. And there is no need to fall into anti-political hysteria. Nor feed it. Anti-partitocracy is OK, but not anti-politics. If she had acted from an anti-partitocratic and not an anti-political position, Mrs. Veskovic would have had many arguments to criticize the process of selecting judges, with this anti-political nerdy approach, she was liked by the crowd, but she did not make the process itself better. We must know where the candidates for judges of the Constitutional Court stand in terms of values, politics and ideology, in order to be able to judge them. Because what good can an excellent lawyer bring us, if that excellent lawyer is Vladimir Leposavic.
The hope that the state is all-powerful and all-wise and that it should be governed by philosophers inevitably leads us to totalitarianism. And it was never good for anyone there. Every utopia that has been tried in practice has ended in dystopia.
That’s it for today. We wish you a pleasant afternoon.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM analyst and columnist
(The opinions and views of the authors of the columns are not necessarily those of the CdM editorial staff)
