Good morning! The Prime Minister announced yesterday that he wanted to see all members of the ruling majority in the executive branch. Does this mean that the time has finally come for Milan Knezevic and DNP to end their long fast?
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Milan Knezevic enters the Government?
The pressure campaign bore fruit. Democratic People’s Party (DNP) led by Milan Knezevic, the sister party of Rogozin’s “Rodina”, is to enter the Government. This does not mean, however, that Milan Knezevic will be in the highest position in the Government as far as his party is concerned. Namely, in Dusko Knezevic’s TV show, he said that he would not be the deputy prime minister representing his party, but that, after the party’s decision, it could most likely be Maja Vukicevic. Maja Vukicevic is now in the Parliament, and leads the Montenegrin delegation in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, where, as the head of our delegation, she represents Vucic’s government in Serbia and expresses pro-Russian and pro-Belarusian positions.
I joked earlier that there are no members in DNP except for the duet of Milan Knezevic and Dragan Koprivica, but things are not exactly like that. There is also Milan Zogovic, an aggressive Serbian nationalist with an Albanian patronymic. There is also the somewhat more moderate Bojovic and his wife who is not officially a member of the party. Unlike Milan Knezevic’s anti-church Bolshevik approach, the Bojovics have much closer and better relations with the Serbian Orthodox Church, but it seems that in the current division of forces within the party, they will not advance to higher state positions.
There is also the young hope Nikola Jovanovic, who has been lent to Budva for a couple of years, from where, as things stand now, he will be chased away by the local population. It remains to be seen whether they will plan him for a high position, or whether he will have to settle for a position at the bar.
All in all, the coalition is expanding. The Prime Minister is open to everyone. In the aforementioned show, Milan Knezevic praised SD and the Bosniak Party, which voted for the election of Milorad Markovic to the position of Supreme State Prosecutor. Is there a chance that they too will enter the government, and thus reduce the blackmail capital of some parts of the majority? Will DPS and URA remain alone in the opposition?
Wicked tongues say that DPS is already in power. Membership and closeness to DPS is no longer a disqualifying criterion for appointments to management and operational positions. Judging by the fierce comments against the authorities, it seems that the party did not approve of these appointments, and that they are primarily individual flights.
With incredible ease, Spajic balances the seemingly incommensurable wishes and ambitions of his coalition partners, while also managing to keep his party together. Pushing identity issues aside yesterday, while emphasizing infrastructure and the economy, can be a good tactic, but only if there is a strategy so that no one’s identity is threatened to the point of causing an imbalance. The case of the Faculty of Montenegrin Language and Literature will be a big stress test for this government.
However, the current government composition, in which the role of a Montenegrin who cares about identity is played by Andrej Milovic, is not the best recommendation for identity balance. Because on the other side there are heavyweights like Mandic and Knezevic, and because in his party he has MP Dragovic, pushing Serbian nationalism to its limits.
That’s it for today. We wish you a pleasant rest of the day.
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)
