Good morning! Aleksandar Vucic will beat Budva, and there is good chance that he beat Montenegro a long time ago. As long as there are Montenegrins who, like Milan Knezevic, are ready to entertain the Belgrade “gentlemen” like trained monkeys on Pink TV and Happy TV, there is no luck for us.
Click here to join our Viber group, where we update you live from hour to hour and answer your questions directly.
Budva beaten
I’d like it more if I had been wrong than right back in 2020. I would like Dritan Abazovic to have shut the mouths of all critics and shown that we jumped to our feet in 2021 for nothing. That the story about Russian-Serbian influence in Montenegro is nonsense, and that our biggest problem is corruption and organized crime. That there is no chance that Montenegro will ever again allow itself to lose its independence and sovereignty in favour of Serbia.
I was surprised by the RTCG’s invitation to be a guest on the election night in Budva. The last time I was a guest was on election night in 2020. It’s not that it affects me, because I get a little tired of being a guest on TV stations. If at least they paid for that. But all this shows the tendency towards censorship of every government.
Why I mentioned this. Because one of the holders of the majority list met me on the street in the week before the election and said “I hear you are going to be a guest on RTCG, we must be in a lot of trouble considering that you are returning to the national broadcaster”.
It’s good that they are self-deprecating. I just don’t know if they are fully aware of how much damage has been done. The damage is not measured by a higher or lower excise tax on cigarettes. The damage is measured by the changed socio-political fabric of the country. From a country that was rushing forward to the West, we have come to a situation where Vucic is messing with our cities and government, with the help of shameful people who go to Belgrade to stick to his power.
And it’s in vain that PES pulls towards the West if it emerges wounded and weak from that process. We will be in the EU for nothing if some Orban or Vucic will lead us inside the EU.
I would not like to be right, but it would be wrong to look at Djukanovic’s era as the golden age of Montenegrin independence. It wouldn’t be right to wish for him badly. And there is every chance that we will look at that time as a time of enlightened, benevolent authoritarianism. Because, compared to Vucic’s regime, he is exactly that. What a friend said in anger recently, “now I feel sorry that Djukanovic was not the dictator they define him as, at least we wouldn’t have to suffer all this”.
It would not be right to look at the DPS government with regret, because Montenegro should progress and become better with each generation. We should not constantly return to the past in search of an alternative to the grey reality in which we live. Unfortunately, the opposite happens. Instead of reaching for a bright future, we constantly return to golden pasts that were not so golden.
But, if the strengthening of DF continues, very soon Podgorica will become what Budva is now. We have already exported the personnel from here. When Podgorica becomes Budva and has over 50% of Vucic’s loyalists in power, what will be left of Montenegro?
And everything could have been different. Abazovic could have worked on himself and his party, he could have isolated and not given strategic resources to the Front, he should not have given Montenegro to the Serbian Orthodox Church on a platter, he should not have sold himself to Vucic for a pittance.
PES still has a chance. Success on the path to EU integration is important, but it is also important that they strengthen as a party and not allow DF to extremize them. As a society and state, we must reduce the influence of Serbia and Russia in Montenegro. We must understand that independence and sovereignty are a gift and thay are not to be taken for granted. Otherwise, we will end up where Serbian society is now, condemned to Vucic, Vucicevic, Maric Mitrovic and other scarecrows in the nightmare of the Serbian World.
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)
