Good morning! Yesterday, DF dropped the bombshell information that it would join Putin’s agenda, which is being implemented in several countries and which entails passing a set of laws that would make our country similar in value to Russia. Why are they doing this and making it difficult for Spajic to do the already difficult job of portraying the Montenegrin parliamentary majority as pro-European and pro-Western? After all he had done for them? Here are some potential answers.
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Why is DF undermining Spajic?
A few weeks ago, Russia published a list of countries and territories that “impose values foreign to its spirituality and traditions” on Russia. Thus, Russian Prime Minister Mishustin, who you probably have never heard of, signed a list of countries that implement policies imposing destructive neoliberal ideological guidelines that contradict traditional Russian spiritual and moral values. Among the countries, Montenegro was also found, whose government shyly, from time to time, does not help, but tolerates the functioning of democratic Russian and Ukrainian organizations on its territory. The BBC also wrote about them the other day. I have the honor of being part of the team of most of those organizations, whose democratic activists and journalists in Montenegro still feel somewhat free today.
Obviously, this bothers the regime from the Kremlin, so through Vucic, it pressured our people to start pushing this agenda, which they know will not pass our Parliament. But at least it will create a fuss and instability. The much-needed instability that should stop Montenegro’s path to the EU. This is what Vucic wants, and what he expects from his Montenegrin servants to deliver to him.
What kind of Russian agenda is this? We know very well that in 1991, Russia, that is, the Soviet Union, lost not only its territory, but also its role as the source of a value system, which it exported across the border. Sometimes with weapons, and sometimes with the help of soft power. Thus, with communist propaganda, it managed to sow heaps of communist regimes all over the planet, without always directly interfering with weapons. This advantage of the role of the ideological parent, Russia is now looking for again in order to justify its expansionist and aggressive policy. And it seems it has found it. Only that it is no longer communism, but traditionalism. The Communist International was replaced by the Moralist International. Russia wants to present itself to the world, and especially to the West, as a pillar of defense of “traditional and family values” that are threatened by “foreign agencies” that spread “homosexual propaganda” and “gender ideology”. And that story has a strong resonance in extreme right-wing circles in the West.
So far, Russia has engaged in propaganda, and recently it has had a plan to export public policies aimed at suppressing this “neoliberal scourge”. The law on foreign agents, which aims to numb civil society and free media, is the first law that Russia has successfully exported to Hungary and Georgia. Now, we see, it is also exported to Montenegro. The second is the law against “homosexual propaganda”, which it has successfully exported so far only to Georgia. It is likely that something similar will be attempted in Montenegro, and the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) is preparing the ground for it quite well with a campaign against “gender ideology”.
What the DF is doing now, aware of the futility of its efforts, because they themselves are not yet a dominant and consolidated parliamentary majority, is throwing a bomb aimed at further undermining Spajic’s reputation as a potential partner of the West. The DF with Serbia on one side, Vijesti with Jakov and Dritan on the other and the opposition on the third side are all aimed at shutting down the PES and Spajic. Which is natural in the case of Jakov, Dritan and the opposition led by the DPS. The question is, why is the DF cutting the branch it is sitting on? After all the concessions that Spajic made and continues to make for them. And he gave them in abundance.
What the DF is doing is consciously choosing key words that should further set off alarms in the West.
In addition to this, the DF continues to inflame identity issues, which puts the identity-undefined Spajic and the PES in a gap.
Yesterday, Mandic celebrated the Zeta County in Parliament and celebrated Aleksandar Karadjordjevic in the middle of Cetinje.
What Dritan didn’t see before, that is, he didn’t want to see, Spajic doesn’t want to see now. And that is that the DF is currently his worst and most dangerous partner. To him and to the PES as a party.
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 CdM)
