We brought him in to fix our computers, and he started running our politics.
This is how a senior official of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) commented on the political director Branimir Gvozdenović.
After switching to the opposition, DPS will need the best programmers, instead of numerous masters, in order to go green and in the future become one of the constituents of a new government.
And judging by the choice of candidates for vice presidents, only trained masters remained there - Milo and his pioneers. Well, at the same time, Rocen's pioneers.
The largest opposition party does not have a good solution now. They only have less bad solutions.
It seems that part of the party has assessed that Milo Đukanović's remaining at the helm is the least bad solution.
With Đukanović, as a proven leader, there is the least possibility of further attrition.
A panicked grasp at the mast of a sinking ship.
Support for DPS, according to some internal party surveys, is now at around 30 percent, although two months ago it was a few percent lower.
The DPS can only thank the ingenuity and rashness of the new Government and the friction within the government in which the DF is the ringleader in attacks on the executive power of Zdravko Krivokapić, which still enjoys a high level of trust, above 60 percent, for the slight recovery.
Those who are looking for lifeboats on the pierced ship, instead of masts, see that with the survival of Đukanović as party president, they are sending a message to both the domestic and international public - nothing changes.
Regardless of who the vice-presidents will be, what the new program will be, the status or even the intention to start a partial distancing from corruption-criminal and clientelistic schemes, partitocracy and everything that made Fridom Haus call Montenegro a "hybrid regime" or which the European Commission called a "trapped state".
Even if Đukanović publicly announced that he was retiring after two years, few would believe it.
But, if the survival of Đukanović at the head of the DPS may seem to some to be the least bad solution for the party, the question is whether it is a good solution for him personally
Further decline in ratings and attrition of the electorate seems certain. The expropriation has just begun, considering that a large number of DPS cadres are still sitting in numerous institutions, followed by elections in Nikšić, where DPS has only a theoretical chance of winning power, and then in Herceg Novi, where it has no chance at all.
At the same time, the new government has not yet come to a situation to implement the declarative commitment to the rule of law in practice. In a situation where some DPS officials had one foot in Spuz during their party's rule.
All that burden could fall on Đukanović as the leader of the party. And that in two years, at the new Congress, which should be held a few months before the presidential and elections in 11 municipalities, including Podgorica.
This time, Đukanović did not take an intermediate step - he appointed Duško Marković or someone younger as the president of the party and tried to strengthen the coalition capacity.
He would try to control the first through the vice president, for the second he would not need additional mechanisms.
From the position of the president of the state in the conditions of cohabitation, he could largely steer the broken ship and weigh whether to return to the head of the party in two years, run again for the president of the state, or to actually go into political retirement.
This is how easily he can become a victim of his own party.
Another issue that has been raised is the position of the outgoing deputy president of DPS and former prime minister Duško Marković.
By reinstating the position of vice president instead of deputy president, Marković has already been demoted in a targeted manner and has not been given too much room for maneuver. This indirectly put the burden on his back for the defeat in the elections on August 30, although he is objectively less guilty than Đukanović, who is the promoter for the DPS of the fatal Law on Freedom of Religion, or is at least as guilty as the rest of the top brass.
This time, Marković did not accept the position of vice president. He didn't want to stay at a table like this. Nor is Mevludin Nuhodžić close to him, a long-time high-ranking DPS official.
Among the proposed candidates for vice president, Nikola Rakočević should be singled out, and many people, even outside the DPS, predicted a successful political career.
Two days before the congress, Đukanović predicted early parliamentary elections due to the conflicting relations between the two political platforms within the government.
It seems more like a whistle in the woods at the moment, to dispel the fear of an uncertain future.
Đukanović knows that there is great dissatisfaction in the party.
And he knows that factional and clan battles will intensify, the longer they are in opposition.
Unless the new majority gives him a chance to make amends.
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