Have you ever felt like you were living in a "parallel world"? That you don't understand each other with people with whom you speak the same language, because you can't "talk" about the same problems? Or, even when you talk about the same topic - you see an event as a problem, they see it as progress? What seems immoral to you, to them is a clever and necessary tactical move... Well, you are not sure who actually lives in the real, straightforward reality, and who lives in the one woven from transition dreams, huge loans and a flood of interest. And you pinch your cheeks, pour cold water, open the window to breathe fresh air... It doesn't help. It is difficult, in truth, to answer who is right. One, but a larger part, of the inhabitants of Montenegro suffers from the reality brought to them, like an ugly dream, by those chained to their selfish dreams of power and wealth. With neoliberal dreams, they pulled us by the nose and pulled us into a basket carried by a balloon, pierced on many sides, carried by the winds. So where do we get to?
Montenegro, where I live, reads a newspaper whose online edition on Wednesday evening, while I am writing this column, brings news about the head of the Cetinje municipal police, whom the police suspect of stealing money from the cash register. With text and image. Portrait of a man with glasses. Obviously made for party purposes, because behind the suspect is an already recognizable billboard of the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists. Right next to the story about slipping fingers into the treasury - and the news that the protector of property and legal interests of Montenegro, Mirjana Milić, who claimed to journalists that she was officially absent from Podgorica and could not comment on the Mugoš case - Carina was "caught" on video chatting in gardens of the very same coffee bar - Carine. Even if the mayor of Mugoš was on the long side of the cafe table - the atmosphere would be complete. There is also information about malfeasance in Budva, reactions to another increase in the price of gasoline and "something more".
Montenegro that reads news like this will wake up tomorrow, look at what's in the fridge, close it, go to work, who has it, listen to the boss whose party card is a more important document than a diploma from a dubious neighborhood, take children to a school where there is no warm water for washing hands and chalk is saved to catch up to the next supply, their children will go to kindergartens where they sleep two in a cot, they will be called on the phone by parents who have not yet received their pension, so they don't even have bread, let alone a voucher for a mobile phone, they will be asked about their health and how many hours they waited in line at the doctor's today and who are on the waiting list for some imaging or surgery, they will go over in their head how many bills they have to pay this month, and how much will be left from their salary when it is settled all accumulated debts...
However, Montenegro also has its other side. Minorities are more cheerful. To most - distant and untouchable. A page that only reads the press that reports on the crisis in the world. He does not bother with the Montenegrin crisis. The side that likes to read how superior our concept of "development" is to others. The side that doesn't mind waiting in lines, because for them there is an entrance that was once used as a side entrance, now it's the main one, only mortals don't know that, so they always stumble upon a locked door. A country whose children have "private education" and whose elderly parents travel the world at the expense of the citizens. The party that doesn't pay the bills, because no one has shown them yet. And, at the end, or at the beginning, depending on how you look at it, the side where there are fewer and fewer of them. Not because it is not nice for them to live "on the sunny side of the street" where "caviar is eaten, gin is drunk, there is money, there is something to do", but because once the wealth has grown, it starts to fall off. Gluttony takes its toll. The transition from the status of suddenly rich smugglers and smugglers to newlywed businessmen with lots of good connections and bad mortgages can be painful. To some, we read these days, and fatal to the empire.
The two Montenegros have coexisted for two decades. They live next to each other and only occasionally "brush" each other. The two Montenegros do not know each other. And they don't know how to breathe, live, think, survive the day, welcome the morning - on the other side. The wall built with the wholehearted help of a bad education and health system, backward and crippled prosecution and judiciary, stifled intellectual free thought, humiliated workers, unprofessionalism and dilettantism, politicized institutions... is getting higher. The mob organized to raise this wall is attended daily by all those for whom their appanages, armchairs, small and large concessions of the regime are more important than the future of their children. Their sacrifice on the altar of the ruling elite is - their civil dignity.
It is time to use knowledge to tear down the wall that divides Montenegro. To use courage to shake the foundations of those ramparts that prevent free thought from penetrating to anyone who wants to live as a citizen. It's time for everyone, just like the residents of a house, to get their bills due. Well, whoever spent how much should cash it out.
Because they told us for a long time that "there is no free lunch". That's why we are now calling and calling out to them. Let them finally pay theirs.
Bonus video:
