The Montenegrin daily press replaces the lack of yellow press with incessant scandals of the thoughts and actions of our public officials. Constantly under the spotlight, constantly under the microscope. Like pimples. You remove one, another pops up. There are also these subcutaneous ones. They hurt longer, but their time also comes. But there is no need to worry, there is enough makeup for every weekend visit to Brussels and similar tourist destinations. However, focused on one pimple at a time, we forget to look at ourselves as a whole, the whole face, the whole cheek, the dirty, oily cheek that is fertile ground for each of those pimples, the cheek where the only real thing is a straight line of badly applied powder.
Yes, the face, the face of the citizens. Politicians are not aliens or some other special species that came via UFO taxi to Montenegro. They are one of us, the worst, or the best, it depends on who you are.
We are all that face, each man a pore for himself. And when that one pore gets clogged with dirt, it grows above everyone - even though it was once one of us.
We complain where so many people in public administration and companies come from. Again, those with party employment, we say. But we forget that employment is only one side of the coin, while those among us citizens, those who gladly accept all these imaginary jobs, are its other side.
We regret that the new set of chairs allowed the dismissal of the directors of almost all educational institutions in Montenegro. But we forget that those few hundred new directors accepted such a task in such a way. We forget that there are those among us who justify absences on parental leave that they were not allowed to.
We forget that there are those among us who park their cars in the middle of the road.
We forget that among us there are those who throw garbage right next to the container, and the river...
... who adorn every article on news portals with the most hateful comments;
... who buy the latest iPhone and don't have it when they need to help their parents;
... who spend a fifth of their annual GDP on gambling;
... who sell ID cards and voice;
... who call their godmother and aunt when they need to finish an assessment or go to the doctor;
... which are part of domestic violence statistics;
... who see the daughter as a second-class member of the family, if the son is there.
It all starts with us. Those who decide, and what they decide, are a reflection of us, all of us. They speak for us, we give them that right. And the fact that our situation does not change also tells us something about us, our ego and arrogance, unwillingness to appreciate other people's values, unwillingness to say we don't know, anger, shallowness, short-sightedness, and a general selfishness towards future generations. Citizens are a face, and that face is very dirty.
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