Whose Montenegro is it, for the seventh time? We ask no longer out of curiosity, but out of the need to remind ourselves that we still exist. Because this state, if it is still a state, is increasingly looking more like someone's private adventure than a collective creation. And that's why the question arises again: Whose Montenegro is it?
Maybe the question is wrong. Maybe we should ask who hasn't taken it yet. Because everyone who could, took it. They took mandates, resources, laws, time. They took faces and humiliated the people. And now, when everyone has already taken it well, the question remains - what is left to save.
In that silence, at that crossroads, there are still some who didn't know about trade until yesterday. Democrats. Those who swore an oath of honor. Who said for years that they would neither go left nor right, that they weren't interested in positions, that principles were more important than chairs. Now they are in front of the mirror. And they no longer look at the people, but at themselves. Now they will show whether that "Honor me" was a slogan or a vow.
They have become, people say, a pendant for Mandić and Spajić. Those who were yesterday a symbol of political purity, now stand on the verge of becoming an ornament on the keys to the new government. And these keys, we know, do not open the people's house, but the door of interests, private agreements and business packages. And if the Democrats now remain silent, if they agree to be there for the sake of order, then they have betrayed not only the voters, but also themselves.
Now is the time. To prove their honor or to throw it all away. Everything they have built for years, from city committees to the citizens' faith that there is someone who will not bow down to the offer. If they bow down now, they will not be brought down by their opponents, but by their own emptiness. Because without a stance, they are just another party in a row. And if they remain their own, they could be the beginning of something that looks more like salvation than calculation.
Montenegro is not looking for the perfect. It is looking for people who will not sell themselves. Who will know how to say no even when it is the hardest. And now is the hardest. That is why what they do in the coming days will be more than a political decision. It will be the answer to the question in the title. Because if everyone becomes the same, then Montenegro no longer belongs to anyone.
And maybe she is. Maybe she has become what she never was. A prisoner. In the hands of the ambitious and the obedient. Polished and silent. And the people in a corner, hungry and confused. If the Democrats want to have a face when all this is over, now is the time to show it. If not for us, then for themselves. Because those who don't know where they are now will never know where they are going.
(The author is an economist)
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