Ten years ago, the president of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), Milo Đukanović, announced to his successor, Igor Lukšić, that he had a free hand for all personnel decisions for ministers in the government:
"Just don't touch me Bran".
Lukšić knew that Brano Gvozdenović was a stone that would blister him in the shoes he had to put on. He asked the then leader of the Social Democratic Party, Ranko Krivokapić, to publicly oppose the election of Gvozdenović, which was not difficult considering that he was building the image of a politician who is looking for the removal of rotten boards from the system.
Instead of Gvozdenović, Predrag Sekulić was elected minister.
Lukšić then kicked the stone out of his shoes, which turned out to be too big for him.
Now Gvozdenović is mentioned again as a stone to be thrown out.
This time he is the stone that blisters the party.
So much so that now even former member and councilor of DPS in SO Bar, Miloš Fuštić, recognizes the malignant influence of the political director, whose resignation he demanded.
The DPS presidency announced that a congress will be held in mid-December, the goal of which is comprehensive personnel reform, improvement and dynamization of the party's work at all levels.
A few things need to be cleared up first.
Lukšić will not form a new party. Neither will Milica Pejanović Đurišić.
Nor will a new party/s emerge from the DPS, at least not so soon.
In political parties, splits and fragmentation usually occur when the ambitions of one faction are not met or when one of the clans comes into a position of fear of marginalization by the other/s. How anyone will fare in the new distribution of the hard, party cake will not be known before the Congress, nor immediately after it, when the realignments will follow.
Second, DPS remained the strongest party that bases its projections for the future on the belief that the new government will not last long.
But it is ungrateful to forecast. Even Vojislav Koštunica did not believe that he would lead the Government of the fragmented DOS for a full term.
The longer the new government lasts, the less popular the DPS will be. In politics, the worst thing is to stop the rating when it goes downhill. This has been happening to DPS for months, which CEDEM noted the last two times. Stronger losses await the Đukanović party.
The DPS cannot regain the goodwill of the international community just by shouting about the alleged pro-Russian malign influence in the new government.
The West let the DPS down the drain precisely because it ignored their views and demands, including personnel.
NATO members reacted with indignation when Veselin Veljović was re-elected as police chief, they felt ominous the return of Zoran Lazović to the security structures. Direct requests from the beginning of 2019 for the dismissal of the Director of the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (ASK) Sreten Radonjić and the Governor of the Central Bank (CBCG) Rado Žugić were met so that the Prime Minister's friend took the post of President of the Council of the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data, while Đukanović's school dead, hoping the bear would pass.
The President of the Supreme Court, Vesna Medenica, argued with Zoran Pažin, who later learned from Brussels that three is not the same as two, even though she should have known that the outgoing Minister of Justice is wise enough not to publicly call for her to step down without first he did not consult the first, or the first two men of the party. Then also the states.
It is tragic for the DPS that now the new government can gain credibility with, according to it, suspicious Western partners by amending the laws on the MUP and CBCG, appointing high-quality and independent personnel to the leadership positions, instead of Master Veljović and Doctor Žugić.
Simply, just as DPS and SDP or later SD changed the laws on MUP by playing with police personnel, so now the new government can change the law, using the best democratic standards. Or, as the DPS once replaced Ljubiša Krgović by changing the law, justifying it with organizational changes, now the new government can replace Žugić and, following the Croatian model, propose the governor of the CBCG to the Assembly, instead of Đukanović deciding on it.
Bidding on the staff to be released has begun.
There is talk of the need to free up 5-6 personnel from the DPS.
Let's go back to Branimir Gvozdenović from the beginning of the story. He will likely be the first rock that DPS will knock out of their shoes. But not because he did something illegal, but because, as speculated in the party corridors, he did not provide reliable data from the field. Which, as they see in the top of the DPS, contributed to the electoral defeat.
If they sang the part of the DPS announcement about "personnel reforms", it would read - good shoes are not thrown away because of a few pebbles.
But they stood in DPS shoes for so long, that they surely damaged both the shoes and the foot.
Đukanović is now like a shoemaker who needs to make the shoes comfortable again for DPS, either by removing a few pebbles from them or by patching them.
He has already proven that this is not a problem for him, whenever his interest was threatened. But at that time he was the leader of the party in power. In the opposition, there are much more blisters and much more difficult to patch up. That's why you shouldn't believe in the bright future of DPS.
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