Here I am again, after fifteen days of silence. I kept quiet to see if I could make at least a modest personal contribution to lowering tensions after, thank God and the Montenegrin talik, we avoided a civil war this time as well. Or the peasant revolt against dahi, this time with an Orthodox identity.
I would have remained silent even longer, if at least one of those who raised the pressure to the point of firing had followed my example. Unfortunately, it is not, so until December 5th we will not only watch but also live a replay of the hot September days.
Their summary, in the version of the unsurpassed Živko Nikolić, could be summed up in one sentence - the war has not yet started, and we don't know what will happen...
What we know would not fit in any book. Volumes could be written about the political, and by God, the personal hypocrisy displayed by the warring parties by simultaneously calling for peace and inciting war.
The two Montenegros, despite that, did not move to Cetinje on September 5.
It would have been good news if a day later they had not continued their joint offensive against the third, civilian and only one possible within the current state borders - the one represented by the URA and its coalition partners.
* * *
Why am I leaving the Democrats out of the civic story this time?
First, because in the most dramatic days of the referendum, they acted as an OSCE observation mission.
Second, but not in terms of importance but in chronological order, because in the first address after the collective silence, they gave up even that strange non-aligned position and openly sided with the Serbian Church.
The dramatic statement demanding that the Metropolitan of the SPC must be enthroned in Cetinje, sent in the middle of a night full of fear that the enthronement could be covered in blood, confirmed that the DCG does not see beyond party interests. The most important of which is the takeover of Democratic Front voters ahead of local and other elections.
How important party interests are to the DF, and survival in power to the prime minister - was shown by the eyeless trading of functions and the census at a time when all of Montenegro is shaking in fear of a civil war.
URA, unlike them, that night and in the days that preceded and followed it, showed that it was ready to sacrifice not only party interests but also the entire party for the sake of the general interest, which is called - Montenegro.
Those who do not believe in it today will see for themselves after the parliamentary elections, if it is not already too late for civil Montenegro...
* * *
The Serbian Church will also be convinced, but not so quickly, that the enthronement of Cetinje is its biggest defeat in a hundred years on the soil of Montenegro.
Can the Serbian media turn that defeat into a victory by singing a turbo-folk version of the post-Kosovo cycle...
Can the Serbian patriarch, for external use, coat the Serbian name of the church with Orthodox gel...
Can the head of the Serbian state deny the Montenegrin national name using a linguistic stunt #onikojiseizjašnjavajukaocrnogorci...
Anything is possible, but the images of the helicopter that both His Holiness the Patriarch and His Eminence the Metropolitan descend under Lovćen in the same dignified manner as that can on Rumi can never be erased from Serbian memory or from the multinational internet.
And then, hidden by a body armor-blanket - which even Arkan didn't need even in the middle of the war - they burst into the Cetinje monastery like guerillas.
This is what happens when spite is more important than godliness!
And when centuries-old Montenegrin Java is trying to chase away its hundred-year-old dreams of a Serbian world.
And when, due to serving politics, the ecclesiastical performance of the retired metropolitan from the last decade is erased with the stroke of an eraser, and the one from the nineties, which he himself renounced, is added.
I don't know how many opponents of the enthronement took to the streets of Cetinje, I just remember well how Metropolitan Amfilohije cleared up a similar but completely harmless situation in terms of motives, to his own detriment, but in favor of peace.
When, four or five years ago, only about a hundred locals protested about a religious ceremony at the ruins of Svač, he relented and served the liturgy on the meadow...
* * *
Despite everything, the biggest problem of the state of Montenegro is not the Serbian Church, but the Montenegrin Prime Minister. You can't go forward with him like this, he has no intention of changing, and if we change him, we will have to hold new elections. Which, percentage up or down, will bring - the same result and the coalition government of the same partners.
Milo Đukanović taking over the government after those elections is not realistic, especially not after the Cetinje protests. I would not like to assess whether he came out of them as a bigger loser than even the Serbian Church, but if he beat himself to the punch - he did.
Taking over the command function of the brigadier of the comitis-autocephalous movement in vain, wasting the party's strength and handing out flags instead of party booklets, there was no use even from the few tycoons who are still willing to finance the return of the master - Milo Đukanović did not manage to bring even - every hundredth supporter to the streets .
He managed, however, to achieve something that even a mind much shallower than his could have guessed - to dissuade at least fifteen thousand admirers of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church who have been coming to Dvorski trg for decades from protesting.
And then, if the videos from the portal aren't lying, he went to beat away his sadness at a celebration organized on the occasion of a wedding in a Serbian church.
* * *
Uh, I went too far, I didn't leave room for the main hero and a little less the main cause not only of these protests in Cetinje but also of those that are yet to follow - Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapić.
His remaining in power guarantees a more or less stable path to the European Union, which is good from the point of view of those who still believe in the bright future of European integration. Especially if Dritan Abazović continues to iron out his mistakes at this rate, including those on the night between September 4 and 5, for which the Vice Prime Minister's Commission will absolve him.
It is bad, however, that due to the stabilocracy, Montenegro has already lost fifteen key years, not to mention the late return in the first fifteen post-war years.
The fact that I will end up in psychiatry before the prime minister's term expires, may God make it easy for him.
However, it is not forgivable that he continues to fuel the well-founded suspicion that all those who naively believed that prime ministers serve to lead a peaceful state policy and not to encourage division by strengthening the role of the church in social and political life will follow in my footsteps.
* * *
Only ten days have passed since the spiritual-secular war did not break out in Cetinje, most of the politicians are trying to at least pretend that tensions have subsided, and the prime minister is waiting for not only the Montenegrins of Cetinje but also Montenegrins from other cities to take to the streets.
I can understand his ignorance of history, inexperience in politics, clumsy expression and oversensitivity to a different opinion. But that he so persistently "cuts" with a "saber" a hundred-year-old church dispute, the factual description of which goes into at least five centuries of Montenegrin history - I don't understand at all.
Citizen Zdravko has the right to believe that the Orthodox church he attends is the only canonical one, Prime Minister Krivokapić must not interfere in that, let alone judge.
Citizen Zdravko may think that the Serbian Church has the right to use the Cetinje Monastery, but Prime Minister Krivokapić has the obligation to leave to the rule of law the determination of all facts about the acquisition and revocation of ownership rights over all temples in Montenegro.
First, checking the cadastral books, not only Đukanović's from 2005, but also all the hundred-year-old ones, from the era of the previous king and master of Montenegro.
* * *
- You know that in the history of Montenegro there are so-called deeds from Crnojević that talk about whose property the monastery is - it's good that he left five centuries ago, it's bad that we don't know if he did it as a citizen or as prime minister.
We know, of course, we just don't know if he knows that those deeds are not so-called and that none of the deeds bear the name of the Serbian Church.
It could be that the prime minister, who by his own admission has been reading only spiritual books for years, did not have time for the secular ones he writes in when his favorite church got its current name.
It could be that if no one had shown him the legal ones written by the state of Serbia, I guess he would have convinced himself that the Serbian Orthodox Church was given that name by the Law from 1929. If the "Official Gazette of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia No. 269/1929" is lying, then I am also lying.
But it cannot be that a believer of his dimensions has never heard how, according to the testimony of Serbian legislation, that church was created:
"The Metropolitanate of Belgrade united with the AUTOKEPHAL Orthodox churches, in order: Karlovac (metropolitan), Montenegrin-Limors (metropolitan), as well as two Dalmatian dioceses, Boko Kotor-Dubrovak and Dalmatian-Istrian."
Books and books have been written on the subject, but the prime minister still reads only the two that calm him down...
P.S. Instead of trying to calm down everyone around him, five days after the chaos, the prime minister poked his finger in the eyes of the citizens of Cetinje again. A lot of tears, both from the Prime Minister's tear gas, and from sadness over the killing of their church for the third time in two centuries. There is every chance that she will never be what she was, but the prime minister will never gain the trust of those Montenegrins who do not allow their history to be given to someone else, especially not cadastral tricksters.
Bonus video:
