Apart from the jokes about the super-fast train from the secret agent 007 movie, the so-called European Montenegro has become famous for other attractions as well.
It has long been identified as a mafia state whose prime minister is being interviewed in a neighboring country about ties to organized crime. It is a tourist destination where, upon leaving the luxury ship-hotel, visitors at the pier can "live" observe and photograph the arrest of local criminals. It is also known as a destination for laundering the money of domestic and white world oligarchs, arms and drug dealers.
It is an exotic, but also a "Balkan success story" in which mafia clans control life in cities with cameras, and dad's pride, pride and heir builds windmills while pensioners supplement their daily meals by picking through garbage cans.
It is a country where beating and shooting dissidents in the legs are just warnings that if they don't make peace, concrete boots will follow. It is the democratic stronghold of the Balkans where, more or less regularly, explosive devices are activated under the windows of dissidents, baseball bats are swung at critics, journalists are pulled, a cannon shot from behind targets an opposition member, and those who do not want to join the chorus in praise of the so-called Euro-Atlantic route of Montenegro. Wild beauty, nothing!
The latest target of the attack, journalist Olivera Lakić, clearly defined the danger and hopelessness of the situation in which she lives. She defined the unbearable lightness of the sponsored violence that she and all critically oriented citizens deal with on a daily basis: "...they just shot me in the leg...".
The constants of this kind of Montenegro are: Milo Đukanović, a seven-time champion in election theft and post-election acrobatics, and his political-business satellites who have been in his orbit for decades, legitimize his authoritarianism and compete with each other as to who will whisper to him more mercifully... "no one can do anything to us, we are stronger than fate...".
Along with Đukanović, you and such satellites bear part of the responsibility for creating a climate of violence. The righteous and above all necessary indignation and voices of rebellion that now animate our social space should also be based on the recognition of this important collateral responsibility. As desirable and useful as they are, these voices are, at the same time, symbols of the lack of two important components.
The first is consistency in responding to violence with the blessing of the state and the party in power towards all actors in public life. Earlier sporadic reactions to state violence against political dissidents were, for the most part, the product of political calculations at a given moment. The recent beating of demonstrators on the streets of Podgorica was tolerated by a significant part of the Montenegrin public mainly because the leaders and supporters of the unpopular political option drank the beatings and tear gas. That silence cast a shadow over the moral authority of many public speakers and part of the non-governmental sector, and called into question the consistency of their position when it comes to state-sponsored (tolerated) violence against dissenters. Cynics might resent them and say that only their wounds hurt.
The second is the unwillingness of opposition political actors and the non-governmental sector to face what needs to be done in order to implement the most effective, or the only effective, model of deconstruction of authoritarian regimes such as Đukanović's: electoral victory. The current picture of the political space in Montenegro does not give hope for an imminent overcoming of the dividing lines within the opposition entities: deep ideological differences, opposing visions of the Montenegrin future, sponsorships at home and abroad, personal intolerance, and the proverbial rivalry. In the DPS-designed darkness of Montenegrin state and social ruin, each of these lines becomes an abyss that is not easy to cross.
However, I think that what needs to be done is to accept the reality and then align your actions with that reality. To think and say that if something is not done now, after the attempted murder of journalist Lakić, there is a danger that Montenegro will sink into the abyss is naive and counterproductive. Montenegro has been at the bottom of that abyss for more than two decades, but we have gotten used to the darkness. We agreed that Milo Đukanović would create a state (first!) and thus paint the windows of our house white from the outside, in order to keep the night inside. Now it is up to us to fight against Đukanović's kleptocratic and criminalized machinery in the darkness of the abyss that we also worked to dig.
Then many of us voluntarily entered the minefield of a state without democracy, which is still ruled by Đukanović and his satellites.
Đukanović will defend the government by all means, and it is only a matter of time and concrete situation who will be the new victims of violence sponsored for this purpose. Yesterday it was the demonstrators in front of the Assembly, then Softić, then Vijesti. Today it is Olivera Lakić.
Tomorrow it could be any of those who gathered in front of the Assembly to protest the shameful attempt to kill journalist Lakić. It is important to understand that organized and sponsored violence is directed against critics of the regime, wherever they come from. Đukanović made it clear when he characterized Oliver's wounding as an attack on himself. There are no accidental beatings and injuries in Montenegro, because a system based on state-sanctioned violence has been created. That realization should be the rallying point for those who really want to dismantle the DPS quasi-mod.
Bonus video:
