Good morning! Happy 13 July! Milatovic took Dejan Vuksic, the former head of the National Security Agency, with him to Vilnius. Were our NATO allies aware of who Milatovic brought with him?
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Vuksic – Leader of ProPutin coalition at Vilnius Summit
It seems that DPS really needed to fall in order for the independent Montenegro idea to win to the end and become a matter of national consensus. Vain complaints and fears of the editorial policy of the largest foreign media in Montenegro – Adria, Prva, Nova, Vijesti. Montenegro will remain Montenegrin. Not ethnically, but in terms of values. There is no “Serbian Principality of Montenegro” anymore.
A survey conducted by NATO before the Summit in Vilnius says that over 60% of Montenegrin citizens are now in favor of membership in this organization. If the sample was representative and the methodology good, that’s great news. The number of those who believe that an independent Montenegro was a good idea is also growing. We will put aside for a moment the fact that, if the decision was on the new parliamentary majority, we would still be the 27th electoral unit of Greater Serbia and a part of the alliance with Russia and Belarus.
One would say that everything is wonderful now, and that now we, who were afraid that the change of government would threaten the independence of Montenegro, were not right. Maybe we weren’t, but we shouldn’t forget that many moves by the new government went in the direction of making Montenegrin independence meaningless. If there had not been a protest movement and if there had not been the intervention of our partners from the West, who knows how much deeper we would have ended up in the mud.
This ultimately means that the criticism that DPS and the government of Milo Djukanovic did not build institutions, although correct, was not an absolute truth. The fact that the institutions managed to cope with the onslaught of Greater Serbian extremism, and the fact that we are seeing an increase in support for independence and the NATO alliance, is to some extent the result of the work of the former government. Yes, organized crime flourished during their rule. Yes, it looks like the security system served organized crime, rather than controlled it. Yes, the judiciary and the prosecution were under firm political control. But this country also developed parliamentary democracy under such a government and learned from it.
But let’s go back to Vuksic. The 30-August hero. The leader of the For the Future of Montenegro (ZBCG) list for the Kotor elections, who was immediately appointed as the director of the National Security Agency (ANB) upon the formation of the government. A rich lawyer who loves luxury, expensive real estate and cars. Close to criminal clans and the Serbian church. A man in whose home characters like the killers of Serbian Prime Minister Djindjic were respected and celebrated.
Vuksic proved to be a bad politician. Although Zdravko Krivokapic gave him the Christian Democratic Movement, he did not manage to make anything out of it. In the end, he entered into a coalition with the young leaders of pro-Russian Serbian politics, Marko Milacic and Vladislav Dajkovic, and remained at 1% of support. As a consolation prize for not passing the threshold, he was given a place in Milatovic’s cabinet.
During Vuksic’s leadership of ANB, the security sector was rocked by scandals involving the leaking of data important to NATO. Nevertheless, Milatovic says that he trusts him, and that Vuksic is trusted by his strategic partners. If that is true, then we need not worry. Does that mean that both Milacic and Dajkovic are double agents? Is there a single pro-Serbian and pro-Russian politician in Montenegro who is honest in his Putinophilism, if we know that Mandic once offered his services to the West? If Putin has anyone left here, we especially know that even the most extreme leaders of the Serbian Church in Montenegro, like Metodije and priest Miajlo Backovic, came to terms with NATO, and Milan Knezevic’s party members are the first to attend receptions of “hateful Western embassies”?
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)
