Good morning! Happy Second Democratic Valentine’s Day. SDP and DPS in Cetinje facing the collapse of agreement and point the finger at each other; DF announces the blockade of Montenegro synchronized with the culmination of the crisis in Ukraine; Sekulovic gave honorary citizenship to Atanasije.
Cetinje gambit
While the Front is preparing to block Montenegro, and mass applications for Montenegrin citizenship are announced, while the Democrats’ protests continue, while we learn that Sekulovic gave honorary citizenship to the Bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church Atanasije, and while agreements on the minority government are heating up, everyone is paying attention to Cetinje.
No one can say for sure what will happen in Cetinje today, but judging by the reactions of well-known DPS and SDP activists all last night on social networks, this scenario in which the SDP agreed on a minority local government without the DPS was in force until last night. Ivan Vukovic, who is the DPS coordinator for Cetinje, indicated in his tweet that there is truth in all this.
The DPS and SDP have not been able to agree on the government in Cetinje for two months. The SDP insists that the DPS does not run the municipality, while the DPS does not want to agree to such humiliation, using its 41% as an argument that it should lead the government. What we learned from Ivan Vukovic on Saturday was that they were on the trail of a compromise solution, i.e. that the mandate is divided into two years. However, the SDP insisted on party candidates, and the DPS offered to rotate non-party-affiliated figures. I understand that all this is already causing dizziness to those who are not involved in politics on a daily basis. The essence is that the SDP, under the pressure of independent candidates from the list, but also ambitious local leaders, does not want the DPS to leave the city so easily, especially because they are encouraged by the historical success of the party in Cetinje.
However, Vukovic’s post of the proposal was an excuse for Konjevic to stop the negotiations and to “leave it to the councilors” to make their own decision at the parliament session today.
It was not entirely clear what this meant until last night there were rumors in closed Viber groups, that the SDP had made an agreement with the Old Guard of LSCG, the local Cetinje spinoff of the Liberal Alliance, as well as with URA and the Democrats. With all of them, the SDP has a majority to form a government. According to the mentioned scenario, the SDP agreed to elect the candidate of the Old Guard as the Cetinje Parliament Speaker, and to elect the local head of the SDP, Nikola Djuraskovic, a former DPS official, as the mayor.
All this was the reason for, sorry for the expression because there is no better, shitstorm towards the SDP by DPS activists and disappointed citizens on social networks. They are accused of treason, photos of Draginja from the Resistance Protest were published, and they recalled that the SDP did the same in Kolasin. It was in power with them in Herceg Novi, Kotor, Budva and Tivat. Many insults and accusations were pouring in all directions. Today, it will be clear whether this strategy of creating pressure from the DPS has yielded results. It would not be the first time that the SDP started to take over and then gets back. In such a hesitation and unprincipledness, I left the only party of which I was a member in 2016.
But not to be biased and personal, SDP activists also had some logical arguments last night. Their activists questioned why they were not allowed to form a minority government with URA, and the DPS was. There were posts about how to deal with the DPS, as URA does, “twist their ears so that they must keep their mouth shut” because the DPS only “stabs its relatives in the back”. They also mentioned that Cetinje is about local politics, and reminded of the failures of the local government under the leadership of the DPS.
After that, a logical question arose as to why they did not emphasize it in the campaign, but pretentiously put scenes from Belvedere on their advertising material and pretentiously took over the legacy of resistance to enthronement, thus trivializing the whole story, which now serves pro-Serbian parties for mockery. While I am writing this this morning, I see that there was a “war” on Twitter until 3am, at times more passionate than during the whole of last year.
Basically, we have come to the point where everyone can deal with everyone – as long as it is a minority at all levels. Well done to Montenegrins, we have learned how to enjoy all the charms of politics, while preserving political innocence, which we will later sell expensively in election campaigns.
One should not experience all this dramatically, because it has happened before. Perhaps all this relating to the minority government is a great gambit, a tactical defeat that our collective unconsciousness deliberately allows, only to end up with a great social catharsis.
Political parties pursue their small interests, mobilize and deceive people in campaigns. Machiavellianism is not an ideology, but an insight into political practice since time immemorial. These are some axioms that make political science a science. The iron law of oligarchy. The only cure for this is personal responsibility and an educated and principled, incorruptible public. Or rather, the publics (plural), which do not fall on the charisma of political leaders, are not sold for good positions in administrative bodies, but are able to put pressure on decision makers to work in their interests, i.e. community interests. When we create conditions for politicians to respect and tremble in front of the public/publics, i.e. in front of a citizen, we will save Montenegro.
That’s it for today. Until tomorrow’s reading.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM analyst
