Friday, May 1 - Well, this time he went overboard: nine questions for the Prime Minister without a single meaningful answer from Milojko Spajić...
It was a four-hour pre-holiday record - who's talking about what, about Depeche Mode...
Will you publicly admit that the Government's key promises about economic growth and the standard of living of citizens were unrealistic?
- When DPS was in power, companies were closed, average salaries were around two hundred euros and pensions around a hundred, taxes were high...
How do you assess the progress in negotiations with the European Union?
- While you were in power, no one prevented you from closing all chapters, why didn't you bring Montenegro into the EU in 2007 or at least in 2012...
What about the billion euros from Japan, the establishment of a state-owned Glovo, the construction of a university on Velika Plaza, the creation of a thousand jobs in Pljevlja, and moving into apartments on Velje Brdo in the middle of this year?
- You old oppositionists who are now working miracles, who are connected to the geopolitical opponents of the EU, you of the dark past of the Balkans, leave us alone...
In which month do the ten sections of highways announced for 2026 start? You said that those who fly over Montenegro this year in a plane or paraglider will get goosebumps because the entire country will be crisscrossed and will be one big construction site.
- We have 18 conceptual solutions - the Prime Minister replied, making viewers on the mainland shiver...
* * *
Saturday, May 2 - The question about the amendments to the Highway Law that abolish tax and customs benefits for contractors should have been posed to the consortium "Power Construction Corporation of China", "Stecol" and "PowerChina Chengdu" instead of the Prime Minister...
Because those three companies signed a contract with Montepute under the old law that guaranteed benefits to the Chinese...
Montenegro is guaranteed only aggravating circumstances...
A kilometer of highway from Mateševo to Andrijevica will cost around 30 million euros, three million more expensive than the first section...
The previous government estimated that the 23,5-kilometer section of the road should cost 420 million euros and that work could begin with domestic money and that obtained from economic citizenship...
The first shovel on September 1, 2024, was also the first fraud of the (new) Government...
The second scam was found in last year's budget - that the road would cost 600 million euros, or 180 million more...
The third scam added another 90 million...
And...? Nothing to anyone...
Not even "while DPS was in power", because it was demonized even though a kilometer of road cost three million euros less then...
The opposition at the time claimed that it was the most expensive highway in the world and that it would continue to build it with the West when it came to power...
And she came, without Ura, and continued the construction with - East...
And the same with the Chinese consortium, although not with the same name...
* * *
Sunday, May 3 - So that everything doesn't look exactly the same, in honor of Labor Day, for the first time I am leaving out the Aluminum Plant, "Radoje Dakić", Titeks, Cellulose Factory, Obod, Jugooceanija and the rest of the list of factories and companies that went bankrupt during the DPS rule...
The government is different now, and that's why, on the eve of the next holiday - Independence Day, I would like to make one wish...
And this in the name of his homeland, which - despite the fact that the majority supported independence - the old government forgot about during the first sixteen years because it did not meet the 55 percent threshold...
What my homeland needs to do to be remembered by this (new) government after six years, I don't know, my goal was to at least remind people that there used to be a radiator factory there...
And that the workers of that factory in the late 1980s were hardworking, professional and diligent enough for a Yugoslav giant like Energoinvest...
And that in the early 1990s, the government honored them by being among the first victims of privatization...
Many died in poverty, few managed to get a government job, and the rest were forgotten by the government that supposedly liberated them and all of us from the one in the nineties...
There are only three logical - which does not mean fair - reasons for their being deleted from the list of severance pay for the metal industry a few years ago:
Or the executive branch didn't know anything about the metal industry...
Or did the legislative branch adopt laws without reading them back then?
Or the votes of those workers were not decisive for the elections...
A compensation procedure is underway for the victims of the forestry transition, but turning radiator manufacturers into foresters cannot even pass through blue flag laws, despite the mitigating circumstance that no one reads them....
The majority in parliament is even more persistent in refusing to pay severance pay to all victims of transition, and not just some, which is what MP Miloš Konatar is persistently trying to do...
They will probably accept it before the next elections, in five-year or even ten-year installments...
Which could somehow be accepted if these workers' birth certificates could allow them to be - alive...
* * *
Monday, May 4 - There is no acceptable explanation for why the European Parliament rapporteur for Montenegro, Marjan Šarec, allowed himself to read such a progress report in front of the Montenegrin public...
Recognition, encouragement, unwavering commitment, reforms, etc., etc., as if recommending the Swiss Confederation for entry into the European Union...
Just so that "smaller disputes don't overshadow - or exclude - broader strategic goals", who cares that one of those "small" disputes threatens to block the entire country every now and then...
That's probably why there was only one small but not very clear paragraph in that blanket of reports:
"The MPs note concerns about the adoption of amendments to the Law on Internal Affairs and the Law on the National Security Agency despite strong criticism from the opposition and civil society, and call for transparent procedures and genuine cooperation and consultations, in particular on all laws related to the EU integration process, with all relevant stakeholders, including the opposition, legal experts and the European Commission."
Now, whether it's Šarac or the translators in Strasbourg - I don't know...
But I know it could have been even shorter but simpler, as Clive Rumbold explained three days earlier in Podgorica:
- Dear MPs, harmonized laws should be proposed and then adopted, which is why I express concern that the laws on the police and the National Security Agency have been adopted and have yet to be harmonized with EU regulations - this is how the translator conveyed it...
In case the authors, adopters, and especially defenders of these laws don't understand even Rumbold, let me shorten and simplify:
- First make a good law and then take it to the Parliament...
* * *
Tuesday, May 5 - The Administrative Court proved that even good laws mean nothing to this government by ruling that Vuk Kadić will once again be the director of the Health Insurance Fund...
Okay, the HIF Board of Directors is almost two weeks late, but that would have been good news if two bad ones hadn't been announced at the same time...
That disciplinary proceedings will be initiated "against Mr. Vuk Kadić"...
And that the president of the Board of Directors does not recognize the verdict according to which Kadić is the director of the Health Insurance Fund and not some gentleman over there...
- The Fund's decision does not meet basic legal standards - the Administrative Court was clear - and its reasoning does not indicate that the administrative matter was resolved in a lawful and complete manner...
And we watched, listened to and read how it was resolved six months ago...
The only thing that remains unclear is whether Director Kadić was then dismissed on a party assignment, due to personal animosity, or as a result of the collaboration of these two ruling entities...
With the enthusiastic help of a third, the Minister of Health and Welfare, the likes of which have not appeared on the Montenegrin political scene in the last three and a half decades...
- The Fund's director knowingly violated the law and must be held accountable for it - Minister Vojislav Šimun was also persistent...
- It is not and it does not have to be - the competent court ruled half a year later...
Unfortunately, the verdict against the person who ordered the hunt for Vuk Kadić has not yet been delivered...
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