By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist
Man is a strange, confusing being. But, his actions are even stranger.
The world around us is constantly slipping out of our understanding: whenever it seems that you’re getting closer to an explanation, it moves further away.
So, how are we to understand what people do in this world? How can we judge them: by their actions or by their intentions? Common sense says: ignore what he says, watch what he does. Because most people say one thing and do another. Common sense warns us not to be deceived by sweet words; to beware of those whose mouths spill roses and chocolate boxes.
And then, on the other hand… “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want,” St Paul says to the Romans. He actually wants to note the outcome of our actions is not in our hands, but in God’s. Sometimes you mean well, you act in what you believe is a good way and it still turns out bad. But, it’s also true that: not every evil is truly evil. Sometimes the harm done to you, through a complex chain of events, leads to something good.
Not to mention that everyone in this world believes they’re right, and that “good” is whatever they want it to be. Even those who burned and killed entire cities. Had you asked them, they would have explained why it had to be done and why they were right. Just as those who burned Turkish shops and hunted Turks through Podgorica believed they were right, too.
As for the rest, I don’t know, but morality is definitely relative. It most resembles a condom: it clings to whatever surface it covers, and once used, you replace it with a new one.
When Podgorica local authority and state authorities insist on building the wastewater treatment facility in Botun, does that mean they truly believe in what they’re doing? Not at all. They’d rather not build it. But they must. Because Botun has, in the meantime, become a test of their capacity to govern. It has also become a test of the rule of law.
The rule of law comes in handy when you need to arrest opposition politicians. The problem arises when the law must be enforced against your own voters (those who disrupt screenings of Albanian films, those who catch and beat foreign nationals in supermarkets and then call for their death in the streets); or against your own officials (those who steal state land the size of New Zealand and then have your courts leave it in their possession); or over your partners from the bloc (those who threaten with violence in order to stop the construction of the plant).
The rule of law doesn’t exist so you can publicly shame the opposition and use the judiciary to foster your power. It’s not meant to apply only to former officials while the current ones remain untouchable.
The rule of law means lawful state decisions must be implemented. For example, the construction of the Botun wastewater facility plant. If someone threatens to physically block that construction and claims that a local referendum can overturn state decisions, if state laws don’t apply across the country and the government can’t enforce its own decisions, then we’re in the midst of a serious crisis.
And that’s exactly what Botun is – a serious crisis.
If it could, the government would handle it like it did with the statue honoring Pavle Djurisic – it’d make decisions that would never get implemented: the statue’s gone, locked in some room by a priest who took the key, the excavators broke down, there’s no fuel, sorry, it can’t be carried out.
But the EU has been involved in the ‘Botun case’. And they take contracts, states, and money seriously. As luck would have it, the EU believes that once you sign a contract, it legally binds you. They have no sympathy for countries that don’t respect agreements, and on top of that, they believe that when you pay 100 million, you should actually get what you paid for.
And there you have it – a crisis, like I said. And as Comrade Lenin once put it: the significance of a crisis lies in the fact that in it, everyone reveals their true position. Take the Parliament Speaker Mandic as an example: if he cooperates, he’ll keep his office and continue laying wreaths on the graves of Chetniks with delegations. Or the police top management, who will apparently have to ensure the plant’s construction. Or Prime Minister Spajic, now faced with a truly rural issue that, however, is anything but rural – much like the Djurisic statue once was.
Therefore, the situation is quite complicated, but not as complicated as it could have been if only the Zeta locals had remembered to do what Dodik did – pay and play – that is, offer the land marked for the plant to Trump’s family to build a hotel there instead. But we can always offer Mount Lovcen as compensation and in that way even solve the fuss over tearing down the Mestrovic mausoleum.
Ah, the irony of fate – who’d have thought the road to Brussels runs through Botun.
(The opinions or views of our columnists aren’t necessarily the opinions or views of the CdM news team)
