Good morning! The US imposed sanctions against Svetozar Marovic, and it’d be much better if they did it against his fellow resident Bato Carevic. For the same reasons, Abazovic finally confirmed that the SDP would take part in a new government. Who owns our media? What can we learn from the family from Berlin?
Sanctions against Svetozar Marovic
I’ve never met Svetozar Marovic, and he marked the politics of this city and state in the last three decades. Parliament speaker, president of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, during whose formal and informal leadership of the Budva DPS, this town reached the peak of success, experienced a financial and moral collapse, and it hasn’t recovered from it yet. In 2008, while Madonna and the Rolling Stones were visiting Budva, while the Municipality of Budva was ordering its own plane, when it seemed to many that the sky was the limit of development and wealth, I was a student and voted for Nebojsa Medojevic in the presidential election. At the time when over 70% of residents voted for the Budva DPS. After the disappointment and experimentation of authorities of the then state opposition in Budva.
There were no limitations in the then Budva. Success was guaranteed to anyone who wanted to do whatever they wanted to do. Svetozar Marovic’s Budva did not see religion and nation as a condition for getting deals with the municipality whose annual budget at one point amounted to almost 100 million euros. Some other criteria were more important. That is how the name of Bato Carevic was created, and that’s how Dragan Krapovic’s family profited from irrational land exchanges with the city administration. But, times long gone and milk spilled long ago.
Would anything have changed if the state had reacted at the peak of success, if we had stopped when it was most beautiful, and not in 2010 – when the World Economic Crisis ate up Budva’s inflated property, and when 83 people were arrested in Budva, two mayors and a bunch of other officials and businessmen convicted. At that time, I was in the municipality, and at the age of 28, was tasked with managing the city that had just experienced the “slaughter of princes”. Then the Kraljicina plaza case happened and the rest is history.
The United States is imposing sanctions against Svetozar Marovic today, and that could speed up his extradition to Montenegro. And finally, justice could be served. But the question arises as to the political relevance of this decision and its lateness.
Montenegro lives a different reality from the one in which Marovic was first an official, and then the gray eminence of her policy. Today, he is a man of poor psychophysical health, whose fate depends on the mercy of Aleksandar Vucic and his government. A man who lost the last shreds of credibility by returning to the factory settings and the Greater Serbia story during religious processions in 2020. Or they should have imposed sanctions against some local extremely rich businessmen who, after the change of power, replaced Marovic with new political patrons.
State Department sanctions are much more relevant in Bosnia, Albania and Macedonia, where relevant politicians have been sanctioned, who are now destabilizing the policies of their countries and the region in real time.
Nikolaidis doesn’t know the state of play in Budva well, nor does he pretend to know them, but here in the column ‘Of course everything is allowed to Carevic, and that’s not from yesterday’, he hits the point. Contrary to Djuro Radosavovic, who wrote a novel branding himself as a Budva resident, but knowing nothing about Budva, Nikolaidis is a serious writer.
The entire story about Marovic seems to me only as a cord of the US administration. Someone who costs the least has been punished, just because his name is well known. Sanctions would be much more effective if someone who resembles Dodik, who’s in the position now and currently powerful, was punished. Bato Carevic, for example, who steals in real time, whose family attacks journalists, and who divides society when declaring the Montenegrin and Kosovo territory as a Serbian land. But what do I know?
SDP to be part of government
We hope the minority government will finally be set up this week if anyone still cares about it. As if something is going to change. This process has killed the resistance and creative energy that arose from the protests against the Krivokapic-Abazovic government. And now it’s going to be even more numb. While the Serbian world is doing its job. The last session of the government chaired by Abazovic shows how his government is going to act. We’re going to have the continuity of a correct foreign policy under external pressure, while in the country, they’re going to behave as before.
Subsidies to three commercial TVs whose owners are from Serbia, while the public broadcaster is in debt, are proof of the suicidal madness of URA’s policy.
And Abazovic’s consent to let the SDP into the government means nothing. We can expect the SDP to separate its opinions during government sessions and that they will potentially lead the department they get as it should be run. I think that’s far from enough to be considered a compromise. But what do I know?
What does the Montenegrin family from Berlin teach us?
Anonymous donation is for every respect and should be understood. For the last year and a half, we have witnessed the popularization of philanthropy and humanitarian work of the rich. Many do not talk about their efforts. Some of them do not want to be in public. Some are present. And therefore help and support should not be appreciated. Everyone has the right to help in their own way and for their own reasons.
Hajriz Brcvak, Ivo Djukanovic, Blazo Srdanovic are just some of the names we hear most often. Examples of philanthropy and public and continuous humanitarian work almost without exception come from the diaspora.
The latest donation of a family from Berlin, organized through the Red Cross, for 3.000 families, their continuous work with national kitchens, but also many other things that the public knows and doesn’t know about, should teach us that we, who’re here, should care a little more about ourselves.
The people who are being helped when they need it are not the ‘poor’. There are many children having potential to become scientists, doctors, businessmen, and philanthropists as well. This is how a chain reaction is being made, and this is how love for the country is most effectively expressed, instead of displaying flags. We invest in people, because there are not many of us.
That’s all for today. Until tomorrow.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM observer
