DPS lost the elections four years ago, Milo Đukanović 19 months ago, but the consequences of their decades-long rule will be felt for a long time to come. It is not enough to change a couple of governments to heal a society, especially if it has been exposed to toxic influences for years. In other words, what the DPS has sown for decades is reaping, metaphorically speaking, in Montenegro.
Many “coward’s eggs” remained behind the DPS, which will poison the Montenegrin society until the future. There is not a single segment of social reality that is not contaminated by the decisions and actions of the former regime, which, intentionally or unintentionally, introduced discord, intolerance and animosity among citizens. Since the restoration of independence, DPS has not created a social consensus on any important topic. Moreover, numerous moves were made against the will or without the support of a good part of the citizens.
Repetita iuvant. The DPS created an ethno-federal instead of a civil Montenegro because it used Bosniak, Albanian and Croatian nationalism against the Serbian one to hold power. DPS replaced the secular commitment with the intention to create a national church. DPS transformed language from a means of unification into an instrument of discord. DPS has worked for years on fragmenting the political stage in order to more easily maintain positions and corrupt, if necessary, political rivals. DPS brought Informer, Happy, Pink to Montenegro and hired propagandists from Serbia with the aim of consolidating and preserving the government. The DPS captured the state of Montenegro by collapsing all its institutions, from the judiciary to the police, from education to the media sector. The DPS diverted Montenegro from the European highway to the Balkan cobblestones by allowing organized crime to take control of the judiciary, the prosecution and the police. Instead of “anesthetizing” Serbian nationalism in Montenegro, the DPS worked to inflame it all the time. In the DPS and coalition partners, the idea of Mediterraneanization, and some would say Croatization, of Montenegro was born, which has the support of a very small part of the citizenry. By denying the right of Montenegrin citizens to be what they want, DPS gave credibility to Serbian deniers of the Montenegrin nation and language.
The assumptions to form a coalition that today supports the government of Milojko Spajić are an essential product of the DPS. The top of the former ruling party fought against Serbian nationalism by sometimes strengthening, sometimes rewarding, and sometimes tolerating Bosniak and Albanian nationalism, firmly believing that it is not possible to see the leaders of the national parties of Bosniaks and Albanians in the same coalition with the Serbs.
The nationalists are no less fickle, even though their mouths are full of high-spirited phrases. Soon they change sides, not shying away from using anyone and everyone who seems useful to them, even the “Mother of Srebrenica”, as the Bosniak Party did or as the SNP justified its participation in Abazović’s government by signing the Basic Agreement with the SPC.
Instead of handling Serbian nationalism in Montenegro as in an experiment with boiling a frog in water that gradually heats up, the DPS, with its decisions on state symbols, language, church and propaganda, contributed to Serbian nationalism “jumping” out of the trough and getting out of control before it was marginalized and depowered. Official Belgrade, not counting one or two episodes, from the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević’s regime until the opening of the issue of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro, was practically uninterested in the former “second eye in the head”.
The DPS did not use the aforementioned almost two-decade period to build a legal and civil state, reducing ethnic or identity affiliation to a private and irrelevant matter in the public discourse and political environment. On the contrary, the DPS did not prioritize the construction of a civil state, but the nation-state of Montenegrins, as if we were in the 19th and not the 21st century, with national minorities Bosniaks, Albanians and Croats.
The collateral consequence was to a good extent the autochthonous strengthening of the Serbian national identity in Montenegro. When the regime of Aleksandar Vučić changed his attitude towards Podgorica, at the end of the last decade, he found fertile ground in Montenegro and a series of politicians, parties, non-governmental organizations ready to follow him and recognize him, publicly or secretly, as a leader.
The issue of language is a typical example of how the DPS and satellite parties turned an excellent instrument to unite the citizens of Montenegro and lay the foundation for creating something new into a battleground for the strengthening of three nationalisms: Serbian, Montenegrin, and Bosniak. If the DPS and the coalition partners, for example, had officially called the language the mother tongue, which everyone can call what they want (Serbian, Montenegrin, Bosnian or Croatian), they could have determined which variant would be dominant without producing counterreactions through school programs.
They made an even bigger mistake by inserting two letters and other small news that distinguish the Montenegrin language from the Serbian version in use in Montenegro. In this way, they served, as if on a plate, Serbian nationalists to strengthen their identity positions on the basic human right, to express themselves in their mother tongue, by insisting that they speak the Serbian language. Of course, Bosniak nationalists did not miss the opportunity for the Bosnian language.
Montenegro, despite the great efforts of Metropolitan Amfilohi, was mostly a secular society in which even those who declared themselves believers limited their relationship with the church through four acts: baptism, wedding, funeral and celebration. The political influence of the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral (MCP) was very limited until the issue of the Law on Freedom of Religion was raised, which was best seen in the recognition of Kosovo’s independence despite the strong opposition of Amfilohi. The DPS did not respect the fundamental rule of western democracies that the state and the church are separate: they wanted to build a new church and essentially strengthened the role and roots of the SPC in Montenegro. Just as nationalism is not fought with nationalism, so the church is not fought with the creation of a new church. Thanks to the DPS, the MCP has gone beyond its limits, and it will be problematic for any future government to return it to the exclusively spiritual sphere.
For years, DPS tried to present Croatia and Croats as a closer country and people than Serbia and the Serbs. It was enough to look at the queues at the airport and the bus station in Podgorica to understand the extent of the counterproductiveness of such an intention. The fact that the officials of the DPS and traditional coalition partners had better relations with their colleagues in Croatia than in Serbia did not mean that the citizens of Montenegro had the same experiences, especially since there is no family that does not have a member, close relative or friend in Serbia or among Serbs.
If the DPS had asked themselves how come the SDP never got more than five percent of the vote while they were implementing the SDP’s main ideas, goals and ideologies, they would probably have made much fewer mistakes and implemented more good moves. The idea of a Mediterranean and Croatized Montenegro is legitimate, it has its own logic, but it has as many sincere advocates in Montenegro as there are SDP votes.
It is also indicative that in Montenegro until 2010 there were common transformations from supporters of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro to followers of the sovereignist bloc, from staunch Serbian nationalists to staunch Montenegrins. The independence of Montenegro was brought by the youth in the 2006 referendum. In the last ten years, a counter-tendency has been verified, some ardent advocates of Montenegrin independence have become “great Serbs and believers of the SPC”, and a good number of young people prefer the tricolor of the Kingdom of Montenegro alay-banjak and have very, to put it euphemistically, debatable musical taste. All the opposite of the DPS narrative, not so much out of conviction as out of spite.
People have a weak and, as a rule, selective memory, so it’s no wonder they forgot who brought Pink, Happy, Informer into the Montenegrin media sky wide open: what they broadcast and wrote until they turned the page, as well as who did everything for them propaganda organs for years or had original shows.
DPS fell because its opponents, including those in the ranks of the so-called Serbian parties, realized that when they can’t change their opinion, they change the topic. Thus, they turned the story to organized crime, corruption, a captured state, at the same time embraced the idea of Montenegro’s membership in the EU, reconciled with membership in NATO and the fact that in their lifetime they will not see Montenegro and Serbia together, except possibly in the European Union .
So, if the DPS wants to return to power, it must change the subject, if it can’t change its opinion and citizens that some would like to turn into a nation or nations.
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(Opinions and views published in the “Columns” column are not necessarily the views of the “Vijesti” editorial office.)
Source: www.vijesti.me
