Good morning! Since 2020, in Montenegro, it hasn’t been known who the government is and who the opposition is, who the parliamentary minority and who the parliamentary majority is.
Click here to join our Viber group, where we update you live from hour to hour and answer your questions directly.
Yesterday, Anrej Nikolaidis gave his assessment of the results of the parliamentary elections scheduled for June. Here’s why he thinks Spajic will win: https://www.cdm.me/kolumne/zasto-ce-spajic-u-junu-pobijediti/
Who is opposition in this country?
They try to put “Democracy Day” – 30 August on an equal footing with dates such as 13 July and 21 May. But this date has not brought much innovation in politics. Apart from the fact that a new ignorance emerged, the plundering of resources, revanchism, apart from the fact that the blockades of state institutions have become chronic – 30 August has brought us another phenomenon, which is that there is no opposition. Everyone is the government. Literally. Sometimes less, sometimes more, but everyone is the government or at least they think they are the government.
First, during the apostolic government, the opposition primacy of DPS bloc was given to DF, which was officially part of the majority, but was not allowed into the government. Zdravko Krivokapic and the future Europe Now had DF and Nebojsa Medojevic so they needed no worse opposition. DPS’s block was on a seesaw. They still had the president’s institute under control, and they still held most of the cities in Montenegro. That is why they had the feeling that power was not lost, and nurtured the illusion that the crisis was temporary and that they would quickly return to power. They quickly began to lose city after city, until eventually they lost everything. They were briefly encouraged by the minority government, whose greatest successes were the Fundamental Agreement and the suppression of the protest movement. When they fell out of the government, and when the position of the president was threatened, the We Are Numerous protests were launched, which were a parody of the protest movement from 2020 and 2021.
After the election of the minority government, the opposition primacy was taken over by Europe Now and partly by Democrats. The fact that those who “increased salaries” were dismissed gave them an excellent platform to promote the opposition narrative that they were interrupted while they were “doing something for the people” and that they should be returned to power to finish the job. While they grew and developed like that, the DPS bloc continued to lose cities, adhering to the maxim “the losing team should not be changed”, as Nicolaidis rightly noted yesterday.
Well-intentioned advice to DPS a few years ago, and even now, would be to prepare and adapt their activities to long-term opposition work and to spend a lot of time designing their activism and work. Uncontrolled reactivity will do them no good. It is very possible that DF will not be given any state-level posts again after June, even if they need them. This means that DF will be the loudest opposition entity.
DPS at least admitted defeat. That’s halfway to recovery. The leader of the party resigned. The rest of the bloc pretend it’s none of their business. SDP pushed out Draginja and put on her what the Krivokapic-Konjevic duo is responsible for. In the end, Bujo Grobar (Partizan fan), the mayor of Cetinje, will bring them into a coalition with the 30-August winners, i.e. the SDP official who currently holds the highest office in the country. SD changed the leader after 2020, but they still do not recognize the reality. They have Plav, and a chance to further profile themselves in Bar. If they flirt with the state government, they can pack up together with SDP. Both of these parties are on the threshold of the census, and Rade Bojovic’s proposal about the Congress uniting with DPS now sounds very coherent. The defeat of the entire DPS bloc should not only be on Djukanovic’s shoulders. It should be shared by the leaders of other parties from that bloc. SDP, SD, LP. Let the leaders of smaller parties take responsibility and declare themselves clearly to the end. Are they part of the same bloc, or are they ready to turn coats?
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)
