Whoever wishes Montenegro well, shouldn't be a part of August 30th contraption

Written by: Zoran Majski 

You just have to give a man the chance to talk and you will find out who he is. I like this saying, so relevant today, when political, pre-election and post-election events broaden the context of its applicability and open the possibility for many paraphrases that give a plastic description of the circumstances in which today's Montenegro finds itself, faced with the unreal systemic chaos and hypocrisy produced by “August 30th” coalition.

Parliamentary elections have clearly shown that you can fool Montenegrin citizens once, maybe twice, but this, now obvious, intention will be punished, because there will be fewer and fewer naive and politically illiterate people to whom you can sell this kind of mockery as a national interest.

Can statements of the President of Montenegro Milatovic, who swears in Brussels that he shares the same value system with NATO and Western partners, sound convincing to anyone, when the party of which he is deputy leader is flirting with pro-Russian Democratic Front and their disciples, and he has surrounded himself with pro-Serbian and pro-Russian advisors, known for their blind allegiance and adoration for Putin (and maybe even Prigozhin – God only knows).

If Montenegrin citizens needed two successive governments to find out what we were talking about, let's hope that the international partners have a clear understanding of this duplicity and that they do not see it as an internal political maneuver, designed for domestic use and eventual rekindling on the Spajić-Milatović relationship, but rather as a true future policy direction, which stays loyal to the original principles of the 30th of August. These can be most accurately defined by five words: Serbian Orthodox Church, Serbia, Russia.

Nevertheless, we are still waiting for a stronger international response to the fact that Western Balkans is a hostage of the Serbian Orthodox Church and its strategy to preserve dominance over the political elites it controls or produces, and its aspirations to maintain and strengthen its privileged position in the current geopolitical turmoil, which guarantees it a sizable social influence. False emotions and national pathos are only used to conceal from the Orthodox people in the region the fact that the fight for Kosovo is a tool used by Aleksandar Vučić to produce and solve crises and use “escalate to deescalate” tactics. Thus, he creates the appearance of a statesman without whom the region would slide from stability to chaos, as in the 1990s.

Kosovo has long been a burden to Serbia, rooted in traditionalism and epic myths. If it became part of the system of Serbia, the Albanians would be the dominant political force that would have to have one of the most important functions in the country. Delaying the solution suits everyone, including Western administrations, because even the division of Kosovo is something that inevitably causes the redefinition of borders in the region and leads to potentially dangerous destabilization, which, in the context of the war in Ukraine, no one needs.

Current events in Russia clearly suggest that in the clash of titans, this regional problem has recently not been a priority for the US. And how else but to shift the focus in a situation that clearly suggests to us these days that in the chaos of Russian aggression against Ukraine, it is quite easily possible for some island leader of a mercenary army to take control of breathtaking nuclear war resources. You don’t kid with that! When Milošević, bluntly and criminally, tried to ethnically cleanse Kosovo through war, he became the subject of focus, the results of which we remember. Today, the situation is different, and Vučić buys time by stalling negotiations while, faking national trauma, he fiddles with the Union of Serbian Municipalities.

Kosovo has been objectively lost to Serbia everywhere except in Preamble of Serbia’s Constitution, but it is still an issue that can create numerous security implications. Anyone who thinks that Vučić is only bound by the Constitution is naively forgetting the influence of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which, with its broad support in the Serbian population and its irreconcilable attitude towards Kosovo, has Vučić by the neck.

It is a very wrong assessment that regional compensations can pacify Serbian society, which has been indoctrinated for generations by the influence of the SOC, its social views and priorities, with the strong support of the broadest social elite. No one can become a relevant political subject in Serbia without the affirmation of traditional myths promoted by the Serbian Orthodox Church, on which rests the broadest understanding of the history of the ordinary Serb, for whom the church is the origin of tradition, national and state goals.

Politics can choose a patriarch of SOC, we have witnessed this on several occasions, but it cannot change the fundamental influence and social consensus on the role of the Church in Serbian society and nation. It is stronger than any political idea, doctrine and subject. That is why the Serbian Orthodox Church sets priorities and red lines that must not be crossed if one wants to remain politically, and many will say also physically, alive. This is a historical continuity that is evident in today's government, but also in the opposition, which is as radical as Vučić when it comes to the place of the church in the Serbian state and society, competing with him in who is a stronger supporter of the national interests that it defines, which are far from civic values and Euro-Atlanticism.

Vučić sees his chance in postponing the solution, while for the SOC it is the possibility that in some future geostrategic storm there will be shifts that would call into question today's borders and the status of the countries in the region in which the SOC has a stake. That is why the fight against the dominance of the Serbian Orthodox Church is not the extinguishing of civil and religious freedoms, which the democratic world is rightly sensitive to, but rather a progressive way of curbing the para political influence of an organization that with its malignancy stifles the progress of the region as a whole, and long ago went beyond the scope of its competences.

Montenegro looks more and more like a consolation prize for the Republic of Serbia, because it is inexorably turning into a mere shell, while the proclaimed Euro-Atlanticism remains only a mere form promoted by the Augustists in an extremely disingenuous manner, and truly controlled and administered by Vučić and the SOC through their political and security agents, with which they fill Montenegrin institutions, including the staff of the President of Montenegro. It is dangerous to ignore that the SOC is today a factor that takes precedence over politics at critical moments and is able to mobilize the widest support in the region.

The connection with the Russian Church gives this approach even more weight. With this influence, the SPC turns political subjects and personalities into “sleeper agents" of the Church, who overnight become exponents of its retrograde goals, although until then they created the appearance of civil socio-political actors. In Montenegro, this fickleness takes on a tragicomic aspect and confuses the electorate more and more, which was also shown in the recent parliamentary elections. It is the perfect space for the SOC, as the main authority, to overcome that distrust towards political actors, take over the baton and direct the coalition intentions of parties and individuals, which depend to a large extent on its current needs and goals.

Church personnel is painstakingly installed across relevant institutions with the clear goal of collapsing the points of resistance to this kind of anti-state and assimilationist policy. It is a very current, but also an illustrative example of the persecution of the elite part of the academic community within the Faculty of Montenegrin Language and Literature, while they admirably and uncompromisingly try affirm the civic cohesion with which Montenegro achieved its most valuable social victories. A malignant narrative is being created that it is a nationalist group whose support is limited to a numerically insignificant small circle of extremists from Cetinje.

This is done to marginalize the Montenegrin civil resistance, perfidiously returning us to the nineties when today's Royal Capital was, beautifully but also tragically, called a free territory. Both then and now, it is clear the intention with which Cetinje, as a paradigm of Montenegrin statehood and national continuity, is trivialized and presented as a cute anachronism, which, instead of being a cradle of nation, is reduced to countless times told jokes and quips about its characters.

It is a worrying fact that, in such an atmosphere, Montenegrin cultural, educational and political elites behave like opposing camps, without the feeling that only through synergy can Montenegro be preserved and the malignant pressure of the Republic of Serbia and its church to some extent nullified. Anyone who hopes that this problem can be solved with a mix of often kitsch patriotic songs, posts and periodic outpourings of national pathos, should remember the way in which Slovenia did more for its identity and European future in the 1980s, when the combination of culture, political and artistic avant-garde, supported by elite Slovenian institutions, unstoppably stimulated the awakened awareness of Slovenian people about their state and nation. But Montenegro is far from that, and a lot of time has been wasted.

That is why divisions, intrigues, abuses of institutions are our painful present. We are also witnessing this in these days of post-election political immorality, where the political subjects are trying to survive in a political market using the methods of flea market traders and coalition building is a festival of naked political unprincipledness.

Politics, as a public engagement on which social progress rests, has been tainted as a profession to such an extent that the ordinary citizen is prepared to accept any form of inconsistency without any resistance, because, by God, politics is like that! And not only that: if politicians deprive themselves of principles just because the election situation so dictates, what stops “ordinary” citizens from doing the same?

The longer the formation of the government is delayed, the more acceptable and less ethical each salto-mortale will be, because it creates a dangerous impression that anything is better than institutional chaos. It does not take much intelligence to understand that this current pragmatism, rooted also in the attitude of international partners towards our part of the world, makes a considerable contribution to the regional decline, which may be coming to an end, to the extent and dynamics with which international politics will be deprived of the heavy burden of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, where the ominous confusion between Putin and Prigozhin can be a pretty clear hint.

So be patient and united! Let's believe that the time is approaching for the return of the dominance of civic values with which we restored our statehood, joined NATO, came within a step of the EU... Anyone who wishes Montenegro well should not be a part of the August 30th contraption that will inevitably collapse itself. Anything else will suggest to the citizens that the only purpose of engaging in politics is to stay in power by all means.

In this way, we give an alibi to the blasé sterility of the accidental President of Montenegro, to the provincial insanity of the evil clown who, from the position of prime minister for an extended period of time, together with an obsessive admirer of the chair of the Parliament speaker, “reveals” various mafia associations to the public.

Therefore, we learned that there are: bureau, commission, administrative, ferry-sabotage, as well as examination-assessment and who knows what other guild mafia, which they will patent in their circus playbook and offer as a reason for survival in power-hungry political trade-offs.

All of this is a playground for the immature economic improvisation of a charming speculator who, with his crypto-friendly and similar system-destroying reforms, will inevitably cause our country, which was a regional example of progress, to soon become a pseudo-state, with a very questionable reason for existence. That's why there mustn’t be unprincipled coalitions and loss of credibility through support for charlatans, who, under the auspices of a generational change, are dismantling their own house. Citizens will eventually recognize their ill intent and reward it accordingly. And faster than it seems at the moment. Because they spoke, and it would have been better if they hadn't!

Ko želi dobro Crnoj Gori, ne smije biti dio avgustovske skalamerije