A month has passed since the truly historic elections in Montenegro, the first after which there will be a peaceful change of government in our country. Bearing in mind that everyone who has even a superficial interest in political events has written some kind of analysis, I will skip it because so far we have all come to the personally most acceptable conclusion about what led to the final fall of the DPS government after 30 years. That is why I believe that it is much more interesting to talk about what awaits us, how we should treat it and what our personal path will be.
The change of government is a litmus test for all of us who have rightly pointed out all the corrupt and wrong actions of the DPS and its satellites, so our attitude towards everything that the future will bring will say a lot about political awareness. Moreover, that litmus paper, that test, is something that the whole of Montenegro is now facing, regardless of which political gender it belongs to (or not due to its supposed lack of interest in politics). I will explain it with a simple example - this year we had the worst tourist season in recent memory with a very low number of overnight stays (thanks to NKT) but our beaches were dirty like every year, which means that the untrue excuse was repeated so many times that we beaches and the sea are polluted by "tourists". Without tourists, we saw that we ourselves are the most damaging to our own nature and that we have to work on it.
Now we have the opportunity to prove ourselves without DPS, at all levels, from those who will occupy the highest positions in the government to the most ordinary worker. How many times have we heard (and understood) that some ordinary employee in the ministry abuses the official phone or takes home packages of printing paper and shrugged our shoulders - if the minister rigs the tenders, we will survive even one package of paper. We reacted similarly to learning that someone does not pay taxes as much as they should, thinking, "it's just a drop in the ocean in a system where we have ministers who damage us for tens of millions with "cans" and "loopholes". We understood a lot of things for a reason because we lived in a freaky system. Now is the time of proof - was the system messed up and corrupting us, or were we corrupt so the system couldn't be different. I am sincerely convinced that this is the first, that we are no worse than any "ordered" country and that we can reach that level.
However, the essence I wanted to write about concerns the people who actively fought against the regime, without the umbrella of parties or any other organizations that could protect them. I want to write a few words about the people who went all over Montenegro at their own expense to various protests, those who, after their regular work, perhaps organized demonstrations themselves, those who volunteered whenever needed, supported every individual who was wronged and were ready to stand in solidarity at any moment, suffering damage solely for the sake of their fight for justice. They now have three roads ahead of them, and I am far more interested in these individuals than the leaders who bid on who "indebted" the people more in the fight with the "octopus of the regime".
The first way is probably the most tempting - to find a place for themselves in the new constellation of power, to occupy a position in the public administration, which was untouchable to them. Anyone who is truly professional, and there are many of them among them, and who knows that he can do a certain job better than anyone else with his education, experience and personal abilities, should apply for that position. In such cases, it is not about "first-time merit" but about meritocracy, and we know that for decades the "field" was more important than the true value. On the other hand, whoever thinks that he deserved a state position solely by being a "first-time fighter" is no better than DPS and his fight was never sincere. Whoever goes down that path of "merit" is only conserving the rotten system and making meaningless everything he fought for before.
The second time is potentially the most tragic. That those who want shifts instead of changes should take over all the levers of the system and get a new DPS. Something like this is impossible in the next few years due to the loose majority that the three coalitions have in the parliament, which tells us that the next period will be directed towards dismantling the system of safe votes, towards the recovery of the destroyed economy and the fight against the threat of debt slavery. But after some 5-6 (or more) years, when we will have a new majority, perhaps of the same parties, perhaps of some new ones, there is a fear that what happened to Serbia will happen to us, that a repetition of autocracy, despotism will happen to us and that then we find it again on the street. Unfortunately, then we won't be at all fresh, we won't be defiant, but we will do it out of obligation to past times, but with far less enthusiasm, hope, waiting for some new generations to try to implement a new shift. We see such a situation with our friends who participated in the overthrow of Milošević and are now trying again to fight against the autocracy of Aleksandar Vučić, but they do so with far less enthusiasm, with far less faith, perhaps more disappointed in their activism than in the system they are protesting against. despairing of a seemingly hopeless situation.
The third time is the one I hope for and really want. In American movies, you always have at least one character who still talks about the "glory days" of high school or college. Moreover, many films (and songs) are dedicated to this very topic, the days when everything is simpler, when success is measured by the trophy won in the youth categories, the performance of your small band or something else. The image of a person who still keeps a jersey from the youth categories at his workplace is a movie archetype, but it is not unrealistic - many reach their peak when everything is simpler. I hope that our political activism will be of that type, that in the future we will talk about the days of glory while living normal, ordinary lives, that we will only see in memories the exhausting participation in protests, nervousness before a speech, conflict with the police, arrests and surveillance. I hope that opposition to any decision of the government will not lead to jeopardizing anyone's existence, that we will not perceive the elections as a "to be or not to be" situation in which people from the highest positions of power threaten us with persecution and force. This is the responsibility of everyone who will form the new government. And then there will be protests, I hope against far more innocuous things where we will be able to go out and talk like old men about how "it's easy to protest now, it's not like it used to be". All this does not mean that, when the Government is formed and gets those first 100 days of "fora", we should not criticize them for every wrong move, for every potential injustice. After all, this is the only way we will ensure that the time of resistance to the DPS remains a heroic era of glory, and that the future will be politically as boring as possible.
Bonus video:
