Is there any reason to celebrate? It may not seem like it, but it is. We should toast those who have not agreed to the official version for all these twenty-nine years. On corruption, crime, nepotism, injustice. To those who still want to know. To our readers. Because of them, Monitor will still be around
This week it will be twenty-nine years since the first issue of Monitor was published. In the same year, the Democratic Party of Socialists won power in the first multi-party elections. For twenty-nine years, the Monitor has reported on their crimes - war, dubious privatizations, waste of state resources, nepotism, clientelism, crimes against nature, affairs, one after another, until the last ones we call Stanovi, Koverat, Kurir...
We did not just report and warn, and were there for all those marginalized, whose voice is not heard. We survived attacks, lawsuits by the First Family and their tycoons and godfathers, pressure on advertisers. We survived the Prime Minister's fiery speeches about the media mafia and extermination. And other targeting. And warned and admonished. Today, twenty-nine years later, they are here. We are here too. Is there any reason to celebrate, someone will ask. It doesn't seem like it. Not billions in debt, not their children's jobs, lost businesses, jobs left only for them, apartments and privileges we pay for them, stories about government ties to organized crime, testimonies about war crimes they committed, about envelopes from business and criminal circles that are put in the pockets of high-ranking officials and prosecutors, they have not moved them from their place.
And they didn't just take twenty-nine years from us. They took the future of our children. Who leave, because they don't want to take party cards, and learn to survive from first to first with Monstat's two and a half euros a day. In a better case. They don't want their bosses to count them before the elections. They don't want to feel injustice every day. The country is over-indebted, and they continue to make money from high-risk projects, which will cost us billions. If anyone, except them and theirs, stays here, to return them. Those who stay will continue to pay, while watching one in a series of videos about how corruption has eaten everything - institutions, elections, roads, state enterprises. Human souls.. How organized crime spreads its tentacles, to almost every city entrance, where at least one member of a criminal group resides. But there is one reason to celebrate this jubilee. If it hadn't been Monitor, and critical media, the official version of the interpretation of the previous twenty-nine years would look like this: "Despite the unfavorable environment, we essentially achieved our program credo 'To live better'. We preserved the peace, provided social security and political stability, increased the degree of inter-ethnic tolerance and trust, established direct and solid ties with the international community, renewed relations with our neighbors". That's what it actually says on the official website of the Democratic Party of Socialists.
Thanks to the critical media, which today, especially in the region, are even rarer than they were almost three decades ago, no one can say that they did not know the nature of this regime. A testimony will remain about everything. For those who are allowed to know.
That's why we should toast those who have not agreed to the DPS version of reality for all these twenty-nine years. To those who still want to know and do not agree to be forgotten. Who still dream of a better Montenegro. To our readers. We will still be here because of them.
But we will also be there for all those who want to hide traces of abuse of power, violence, bullying, discrimination. Those who believe that the truth can be killed. Let us tell them by surviving: NO PASARAN. We are only 29.
Bonus video:
