Friday, January 31 - That was one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind, were the first words of the leader of the three-member Apollo 11 crew, Neil Armstrong, after he stepped onto the surface of the Moon with his left foot.
Half a century later, a giant step for a man but a small one for the Montenegrin part of humanity was made by Andrija Mandić, the leader of the three-man crew that is leading Montenegro into the European Union.
- We have not reached a consensus with the opposition, but the ruling majority agrees that the Venice Commission should arbitrate and that its decision should be binding - its boss is ready to sacrifice himself to unblock the parliament.
And that is a big step for the legitimate leader of the national party and the self-proclaimed leader of the Montenegrin part of the Serbian nation, despite the fact that - unlike the astronaut - he stepped with his right foot...
However, his sincerity is questionable, not only when it comes to an advisory body of the European Union, but also all of the binding acquis of that community.
Which Andrija Mandić to trust, the one who today promises to accept every decision of the Venice Commission or the one who has not accepted Badinter's opinion even after 33 years...
Few people remember that proposal from 1991 anymore, that the six republics should be equal successors of the SFR Yugoslavia and that the borders drawn between them by AVNOJ should become interstate...
Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia have unconditionally accepted this.
Montenegro accepted the same at the beginning of the Hague Peace Conference, and then...
Then, in the sequel, there was the historic meeting between Momir Bulatović and Slobodan Milošević, which years later Milo Đukanović would claim was "the most beautiful thing that could have happened to Montenegro"...
- Slobodan drafted the text of the amendment that Montenegro should send to The Hague. Momir and Slobodan argued all day, not about the content, but about the procedure. Sloboda asked Momir to propose it in The Hague, and Momir wanted Sloboda to do it, and he to agree at the conference. In the end, Sloboda "convinced" him. Bulatović eventually accepted it and promised to forward it. I guess something is getting better - that's how Milošević's right-hand man, Borislav Jović, described the occurrence of that most beautiful thing...
In Serbia, we are seeing the consequences of that journey at its best these days, from Horgoš to Jarinje...
Montenegro, only after fifteen years during which it fared slightly better under the DPS than under Omer Pasha, accepted the proposal of the Badinter Commission...
Andrija Mandić is not there yet, he would still be there south of Jarinje and west of the Drina...
And, despite presenting itself for decades as the biggest opponent of DPS, at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century it is still following the path of the DPS of the XNUMXs.
And every day, in every respect, it brings Montenegro back to that path...
And as it stands, it will be introduced into the European Union...
And that's why we shouldn't boycott retail chains today. But rather those with which Mandić is trying to tie us all to a sinking ship...
And the so-called pro-Serbian policy that sank long ago, now we are just watching its consequences emerge...
* * *
Saturday, February 1 - One of them recently surfaced in Montenegro, when a neighboring and friendly country opposed the naming of a swimming pool.
I'm deliberately not mentioning the name, because for this story it's not important who is objecting, but why the pool was given the controversial name in the first place.
- Since when have swimming pools been named after guards from torture camps? Even if they didn't torture anyone, being a guard in such a place is compromising enough. At least in normal countries. I don't believe that any sports facility, school or street should be named after any camp guard. The experience and idea of camps in the twentieth century must not be relativized or minimized in any way. Kiš used to say that this was the century of camps, and that it was the only exam that one failed...
I copied this from Balša so I don't get upset when I can't type, for what he can do in six sentences I would need half a column...
But I have to say something he didn't get a chance to say, about the comments under his Saturday "Pools" in Art...
On relativizing guilt for the evil that Montenegro has committed against its neighbors...
- Djukanovic encouraged the attack on Dubrovnik, he was just a guard - writes one reader, which would not be a big problem if more than half of Montenegro did not think so.
How do I know? Well, to get to that point, all you need to know is second-grade math, and you just need to gather supporters of the former regime and the current government.
The fact that Đukanović has not (yet) been held accountable for forcing the war of occupation cannot make innocent the one who accepted to guard the camp, prison, or whatever that evil was called in Morinje, where civilians captured in that war are held.
- And what they did to our reservists in Lora - is another example of drastic relativization...
They worked, tortured, killed... But who knows if we would ever have found out about it if it weren't for Croatian journalists, Boris Dežulović, Viktor Ivančić, Predrag Lucić and other angry critics of the HDZ wartime regime.
Thanks, first of all, to them, an investigation was launched and the prison warden received ten years in prison and the prison guard eight. The process took a long time, but better late than never...
* * *
Sunday, February 2 - Well, that's why it is the obligation of Montenegrin journalists to write about DPS's war for peace, including Morinj, until its creators and performers are where they belong.
- He couldn't choose, he was probably recruited - is the third and most dangerous example of relativization...
Because it gives generations that do not remember Montenegro's aggression against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina an early amnesty in case some future government decides to commit the same or similar crime...
And because it offends common sense and elementary morality, once again putting thousands of young people who in 1991 refused to go to the first Montenegrin war of occupation after a four-hundred-year liberation struggle on the pillar of shame...
Of course, it was possible to choose.
And to refuse to participate in the occupation...
He was not exactly a young man, he had long held the rank of reserve captain, but that did not stop Momir M. Marković from refusing both command and going to the battlefield... He knew that it had its price, but more important than that was the supremacy of humanity that led to the realization that there would be no honorable bullets in that war... Except for the one he learned about later, Admiral Barović's bullet to his own head...
Milo Perović was somewhat younger, but that didn't stop him from refusing to leave Radovče for Konavle...
And to march at the head of an entire company of heroes/deserters down Slobode Street singing "Oj, svijetla majska zoro"... The anthem of the Liberal Alliance, which at the time the DPS considered a criminal offense, no less than desertion...
Of course, others could have acted in the same way, it just took enough courage to bear the consequences...
And, to return to the beginning of this story, those who baptized the pool could have done things differently...
Nikola Nikša Bućin was a Montenegrin football player and fighter of the NOR.
And he was only twenty years old when he died fighting against the Chetniks in Šišići.
A swimming pool could have had that name, it didn't lack anything...
* * *
Monday, February 3 - I wouldn't want to list all the things Milojko Spajić lacks to be prime minister, but this embarrassing response to the students leading the protests is enough proof that he's not doing well...
Mladost is usually clear and direct, and this one on the streets has asked him to dismiss one minister and one deputy prime minister...
And only after weeks of calling on the two of them to resign. Which, if they had respected the judgment of the public instead of the party, they should have done themselves after the second Cetinje tragedy, before anyone called them out...
Or, what would be even more honorable, if they had done it after the double murder in Sokolac, so as not to embarrass themselves and the police with a futile pursuit of a criminal who had escaped them across the border...
To remove them, the Prime Minister is also hindered by the party's interest and his own, because the partners who still control the security services are not exactly known for their coalition broadmindedness...
That's why Spajić writes a blanket of letters to the students, so empty that - apart from me, as assigned, and my absentees out of boredom - no one has read it to the end...
It wasn't necessary, everything it says has been written as an obligation of every prime minister since governments have existed.
- An extraordinary session of the National Security Council was held...
- All members of the Government are subject to change after a detailed analysis... of their performance
- A draft of amendments to the Law on Weapons and Ammunition has been prepared...
- Establishment of a commission of the Ministry of Health...
- Police recruitment competition...
- Suspending police officers who do not respect the law...
And so on, all the way to suppressing hate speech...
To whose expansion and advancement, this very tripartite coalition, which still supports the Government, has contributed more than any before it...
Including all DPS, they deprive the two from the early nineties...
* * *
Tuesday, February 4 - Today's session of the Budva parliament was reminiscent of the 1990s, but also of the years towards the end, when the two wings of the divided DPS were treated to choice words...
Calm this brat down, you scoundrel, you traitor...
And then the gradation and the traitorous garbage...
And another sycophant...
And I fed you, dressed you, and...
And you carried umbrellas...
And, so that they are not all personal insults, two have been added regarding national and religious issues:
You destroyed the Serbian idea...
You called the metropolitan Satan...
And then, finally, another personal one:
Shame on you, you mutt!
But not for the end of the session, but for this column... Forgive me, but I'm really speechless...
Bonus video:
