The tourist season in which the current Montenegrin government is hoping as one of the straws of salvation - shows all its weaknesses these days. And that's right now when it's her turn, as tourism workers would say - rush hour. A column of cars, to be honest, there is. Absolutely. But not because half of Europe rushed to see how wonderful the sea is in the future EU member state, but because our roads are bad, outdated and congested. But before the elections, there is a remedy for that too. As we are already used to.
Unfinished boulevards are being opened, without lighting and traffic signals, and soon another highway will be opened. However, we need to wait for the campaign so that the ribbon is cut once again, with the smiles of the officials, in front of the cameras. But that medicinal opening before the elections of unfinished everything and everything to the foreigners who come is ridiculous. It seems somehow more credible to the people here. As in the fairy tale "The Emperor is gone". Although everyone sees that the boulevard is unlit and a real threat to tourists, locals, drivers, pedestrians... they happily click its existence. Weird. But, unfortunately, true.
Underneath the unfinished boulevard, on the beach, where you paid for a lounge chair, you didn't get a receipt for it as a confirmation that part of the money will be returned to you by repairing the school your child attends, or installing lights on that boulevard that is now languishing in the dark. You received a nervously torn piece of paper from the pad, handwritten by the tanned son of a transition loser with a blue cap embroidered with the name of some Czech beer – a souvenir from a forgetful tourist who was there last summer. You've got a beach that is cruised by sellers of boiled corn and American doughnuts. You got a place by the water, not far from which the water boiled, because right there there is a hole in the sewage drain that was made half a century ago, and the repair is only a dream.
And just when you've had enough of everything, and when you decide to take a break from your "vacation" on the beach, with some juice on the terrace of a nearby cafe, you realize that they don't give a fiscal bill there either, that they don't serve water from any Montenegrin producer but only imported, that they offer a little fresh, and a lot of imported frozen fish, that, as dusk falls, the promenade fills up with go-go dancers. Run away because you don't want your children to see that scene. You are wondering what to do with the modern fairy tale of the Montenegrin transition about Montenegro as an elite tourist destination that we have all heard for years. As you leave the streets crowded with colorful inflatable plastic things, you realize that your car is parked in a ringed dusty meadow where, also, you have not received a tax receipt. And while you're stuffing your things into the trunk, you hear a tourist from abroad raising his sunglasses to his forehead in disbelief and looking at the display of his phone in astonishment. He hands it to his wife, so that she can check if he really interpreted the "welcome" gesture correctly - concluding that the host government, the government of the elite tourist destination, the government that promises, has taken money from their phone bill because foreigners also have to pay a levy at the end of the world.
And plenty of doomsday in Montenegro. It doesn't fail. Various.
The last one that happened to us showed, once again, on a very specific example, how the system (doesn't) work. Fires from the north to the south of our country have once again led to the question of how it is that we do not know how to devise or, at least, have someone write down a plan by which to react in emergency situations, such as this one. The fire that is burning in Montenegro has clearly shown us the extent of the guild of placing the wrong people in important positions, the extent of their bad decisions, the extent of ignorance and disorganization...
We can only guess how many people got involved in the businesses and trades that were done under the guise of modernizing the fire protection system in Montenegro who did not even see modern achievements. Now a fire, a few months ago snow drifts, before that floods... Never ready, never next. And so for two decades.
These doomsday children of ours set "fires" themselves. The most diverse. Economic, political, privatization... Bukti on all sides. What remains behind them is the scorched earth. Goleta, on which every day it is more and more difficult to "plant" something noble. From a good idea, all the way to a good and honest job. The soil is simply used to seeds from which only abundant fruits are born for the chosen ones. And pre-election crumbs for paradise.
Let's not forget the latest hit - the gas pipeline. Already when we open the highway for the seventh time, the airport in Berane five times, to have the first opening of something before these elections. No less than a gas pipeline. If only they could see the pipes before opening them...
After all the dubious transactions, privatizations, neoliberal jobs and jobs, state institutions full of relatives, godfathers and nobles who drive around in official cars (it is not a problem to take the family to the beach in them) - it is difficult to get out of this dark vilayet where the low passions of corruption and nepotism are socially accepted categories.
However, the sky over Montenegro is clearing just as much as we want it to. We must not wait for some new winds that will come to us from somewhere. We must take matters into our own hands and unravel the darkness in which we are enveloped.
Because "the sky above Montenegro will clear up and Montenegro will be positive". (Branko Micev, Founding Congress of Positive Montenegro, May 26, 2012)
Bonus video:
