English

The perishable nature of the Montenegrin political product

Ljubomir Filipović

Author: Ljubo Filipovic, Associate of the McCain Institute in Washington

 

Local self-governments of Montenegrin cities in which the opposition exercises power recurrently surprise us by mimicking things that they are declaratively fighting.

Examples of nepotism in the cases of Božena Jelušić, Vladimir Jokić, Ranko Krivokapić and other local officials are now well known.

The latest news is that a young URA councillor in the local parliament of Ulcinj – also a close friend of URA leader – Ilir Harasani, began working in the municipality of Budva in early February, in a secretariat governed by his party under an illegal coalition agreement. This is his third party-sponsored engagement in public administration.

It is a classic example of party positioning and a symbol of the kind of autocratic practice that the ruling party, the DPS, is rightly being accused of.

In the Municipality of Budva, this is not the first case of party employment in the new government, or the misuse of budget funds for party purposes. Party staff from other municipalities, who, according to the testimonies of many Budva’s employees, do not even come to work, occupy positions which should go to Budva residents, who are left waiting for a job opportunity at the Bureau of Employment.

It would not be such a surprise, if it were happening to the veterans of Montenegrin opposition, who had a chance back in 2002 to prove that they could be the worthy alternative after conquering power in all key Montenegrin cities. It’s a shame, though, that young politicians and young political structures like URA and Democrats are doing this, since they entered the political scene of Montenegro clean, without the burden of past failures. It just seems that they never moved away from the shadow of SNP and SDP from which they originated.

We keep seeing this, from Danilo Mrvaljevic, the leader of Cetinje Democrats who last year landed a job at the Academy of Knowledge, a municipal building now being used for ethno-nationalistic guslars’evenings, through the son of the director of the Democrats, who was first the head of the Anti-Corruption Office in Budva and is today the main administrator in Kotor, to other activists of DF, URA, Democrats, DEMOS and other parties from all Montenegrin cities, now positioned as officials in Budva, Kotor and Herceg Novi.

While after the “Fight back” protests, after the cypress protests in Bar and after stopping construction on Durmitor, we as a society are learning how to best articulate our dissatisfaction, the opposition parties are learning how to best mimic the party they are fighting for exactly those things that they themselves are now doing. In this way, they are damaging citizens’ protests which, by association to them, lose their power and significance. Unfortunately.

By fixating on the DPS as a symbol of everything that is wrong with the political life of Montenegro, we are leaving a blind spot for the actual problem, which seems to be psychological – seeing public service and political engagement solely as a means of solving personal existential issues. If we do not change our political culture from its foundations, it will not matter whether DPS, DF, Democrats or any other party fighting solely for census is in power. This change should be about awareness that political office is for serving the public interest, sometimes at the expense of personal and individual party interests.

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