INTERVIEW Živković: We no longer look back on the past

If, by the end of the fifteen-day suspension from parliament imposed on the opposition by the Speaker of the Assembly, Andrija MandicIf there is no agreement with the government on resolving the political crisis, the opposition will continue actions aimed at stopping the government and returning its behavior to the framework of the legal order.

This was told to "Vijesti" by the president of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), Danijel Zivkovic.

In an interview conducted via email, he said, among other things, that the alleged leader of the "Zemun clan" Luka Bojović "He is not the only one who put pressure" on the President of Montenegro Jakov Milatović that it was not forming a government with the DPS in Podgorica, but that it was a "broader action of joint forces of persons from the field of organized crime and certain individuals from the Church who are former members of certain security services of the Republic of Serbia."

At the DPS Congress scheduled for tomorrow, your party will, among other things, elect a new Main Board (GB). What percentage of new members should it have?

From the very context of your question, which refers to the fact that the Congress also has an electoral function, the conclusion is that it is difficult for me to answer this question. Namely, the basic competence of the Congress, in addition to adopting congress documents, is the election of new members of the General Assembly. The Congress is attended by 588 delegates who will vote for the proposed candidates electronically. Therefore, I cannot prejudge the outcome of the vote, and therefore I cannot tell you what the percentage of new members will be.

Also, I do not think that the metric by which the success of political processes within a party is measured is quantity, but quality. Therefore, more important than the question of how many new members there will be, is actually the question of - what is the quality of those who will be elected. I can already be precise about this - considering the fact that I know all the proposed candidates, I can tell you that whoever is elected, DPS will get a quality composition of the new Governing Board.

When will the Civic Assembly elect members of the Presidency, and how many new persons will you propose for the position in that body?

After the election of the new General Assembly, the party president proposes a new composition of the Presidency at the first subsequent session, and then proposes to the newly elected Presidency the composition of the General Secretariat - the Secretary General, the Political Director, the Business Director and the Spokesperson. This will also complete the four-year process of DPS reform, which began at the Ninth Congress.

As for specific names, it is too early to talk about them. They will certainly be known to the public very soon. What is even more important is that DPS has a constellation of great people who are part of the new political generation, and that from the aspect of quality we will have no problem in equipping a team whose main task will be to further strengthen citizens' trust in our party.

Why did the DPS decide to amend the party statute and include a provision on an honorary president?

First of all, let us clarify some details for the readers - the Statute, as a new institute, includes a norm that the party can have an honorary president and that he is elected from among the former presidents of the DPS. And as I have already announced, Mr. Milo Djukanovic will be nominated for that position at the upcoming Congress.

This decision was made by the new leadership as an expression of gratitude for everything that Mr. Đukanović has done for the party during the 25 years he spent at its helm. I believe that hardly any other party in Europe can boast of results like those that the DPS has achieved in previous years. In addition, during that period, significant successes were achieved in the field of state policy that we can say are historic.

DPS is a large family that functions as a single entity at all levels - from the youngest representatives in the Youth Council, of which I myself was a member, to the most experienced ones who have managed state policy for years. Unity and institutionalization at all levels of work represent the strength of our politics that our political competition cannot penetrate.

Did the DPS membership request that Mr. Đukanović be nominated for that title and how did he react to that idea?

The DPS membership undividedly supports the idea of ​​Mr. Ðukanović being elected honorary president.

What is your view on the critical assessments of DPS MP Nikola Janović regarding the introduction of the title of honorary president? He recently stated that “the concept of honorary presidents... in any party is not particularly close to him”, and that the introduction of this title leaves “it to the will of someone's imagination and the propaganda of other parties to draw their own conclusions and additionally spin and impose a narrative in the public space, for which there is no need”?

I believe that from the overall context of Nikola Janović's answer you have concluded that there cannot be even the slightest room for spin and wrong conclusions. Mr. Janović himself said that Milo Đukanović has no ambition to run a shadow party, which he confirmed with his personal example that he never had the slightest intervention in his political work.

Our competition and others who constantly deal with the character and work of Milo Đukanović will continue to do the same, whether he is in the position of honorary president or not. This only shows how much they still live in the past, lacking the vision to offer the citizens something new.

Mr. Janović also said on that occasion that he understood the need of the people who wrote the Party Statute that the appointment of an honorary president was a kind of recognition and gratitude, and that it was certainly a nice gesture, and added that the merits of some people are historical and indelible. I believe that this addition to the quote sufficiently answers your question.

Will the election of Mr. Đukanović as honorary president further undermine the coalition capacity of the DPS? If you think it will not - why?

It often seems to me that our competitors are most concerned about the coalition capacity of the DPS, whose main goal is the political marginalization of the DPS. One would get the impression that they, as conscientious citizens, are actively considering what is good for the future of our party. By that logic, party decision-making should be left to the current parliamentary majority.

I believe that from this ironic introduction to the answer it is clear to you what I think about the “well-intentioned advice and comments” coming from the ranks of the proven media and political opponents of DPS. Ultimately, DPS has never gone public and made decisions along the line of least resistance, which seem popular in the short term. On the contrary, we have always followed the more difficult and correct path, making strategically difficult and correct decisions that have very often been misunderstood by a smaller or larger part of the public. As a result of such actions, we have lasted in power for almost three decades and today, after five years spent in opposition, we are the strongest political party in Montenegro with almost 30 percent support.

How does DPS intend to get into a position to exercise state power if it has the coalition potential it currently has?

I do not agree with the statements that exist in the public that the coalition potential of the DPS is weak. I will try to further clarify the answer to this question. I will remind you, first of all, that all the governments that our party has formed have been coalitions. Our partners in those governments were the Social Democratic Party, the Social Democrats, the Liberal Party and, what we are especially proud of, the parties of minority peoples that gave specific weight to our political alliances.

This was a pro-European and civic bloc that, until August 30, 2020, had a majority in Montenegro. After those parliamentary elections, the balance of power on the political scene changed - the majority was won by the politics of nationalism and populism. This national-populist politics also won the elections in June 2023, with the backbone of the Government consisting of the coalition "For the Future of Montenegro", the Europe Now Movement (PES) and the Democrats. Civic and European politics are a minority in Montenegro today, and therefore it is completely natural that the DPS, as the backbone of such politics, is in opposition today. That is why it is probably even more natural that nationalists and populists do not want to cooperate with us, just as we want to cooperate with them even less.

Finally, DPS is not eager for power and does not make decisions calculated with the aim of quickly reaching positions of state policy management. Our decisions are made in order to defend the values ​​we believe in and stand for, and we are ready to wait for them to become the majority in Montenegro again. If the results of local elections and public opinion polls are to be believed, there is reason for optimism. The parliamentary majority, except in Berane, remained in the minority in all other cities, with a rapid decline in support compared to the parliamentary elections. DPS, on the other hand, ran independently in all elections and achieved a combined result of 27,17 percent, while we, in a four-member coalition, achieved a result of 23,15 percent in the parliamentary elections in those six municipalities. I believe that these trends speak volumes.

And finally: the coalition “For the Future of Montenegro”, PES and Democrats achieved a result of around 60 percent support in the parliamentary elections. According to a January survey, support for this three-member coalition at the state level is around 40 percent. So, the time of nationalist and populist politics is slowly passing, and the civic and pro-European forces led by DPS are strengthening. Therefore, it is expected that the next parliamentary elections will also bring political changes in Montenegro.

Will the current position of the DPS not to exclude from the party members who have been accused/convicted or who will eventually be accused/convicted of corruption crimes change? Do they damage the reputation of the DPS, which is a reason for exclusion from the party according to the current Statute?

It is difficult to treat the terms "accused" and "convicted" as synonyms in the way you did in your question. The difference between an accusation and a final court verdict is enormous, and between those two terms stands the constitutional and even human principle of the presumption of innocence.

However, your question is valuable because it allows us to look back at everything that has happened in the years behind us. You surely remember the story of our political competition before August 30th about corruption of unimaginable proportions and how DPS officials, after unsuccessfully defending their power with tanks, would flee the country with suitcases full of stolen money. What exactly happened to that, even with such a selective and biased state prosecution? The number of DPS officials with confirmed indictments can be counted on the fingers of one hand. And these indictments concern the implementation of certain policies, such as the one in the area of ​​housing allocation, and not some allegations of corruption by any individual.

So, let's not label people prematurely and allow them the right to a fair trial within a reasonable time, as one of the basic human rights.

Why does the DPS leadership, although it persistently repeats that your party made mistakes while ruling Montenegro for three decades, not specify exactly how DPS made mistakes, which of your officials specifically did it and why, nor does it acknowledge the party's responsibility for numerous scandals?

The fact that DPS is still the dominant political topic in Montenegro makes us very satisfied. It is another confirmation of the strength of our party, which, even from the opposition, continues to be the key axis around which the political scene and the dynamics of political discussion revolve.

On the other hand, it has been five years since the change of government. We understood the message of the voters on August 30 and embarked on a four-year cycle of reforms that led to the first intra-party elections in the history of Montenegro and the appointment of new leadership at all levels - from the president and vice-president of the party, through the leadership at the local level, and ending with the new convocation of the Presidency and the General Assembly. During that period, and especially during last year's direct elections under the slogan "We can do better", we have spoken enough about the shortcomings of our policy during the period of power and we have no intention of returning to that. The assessment of our reforms was given last year by the only relevant judges - the citizens of Montenegro, and I have already answered how they assessed us in one of the previous questions.

It has been five years since the change of government, and there is no longer any reflection on the period before 2020. It is time to present our vision of the future and further development of Montenegro, which is contained in our congress documents.

Are the criminal and corruption scandals involving high-ranking DPS officials, such as the cases of Mr. Svetozar Marović, "failures" of your party's policies?

As I said, there has been enough reference to the period before 2020, and your question has already been answered dozens of times in public. It has been five years since the change of government, it is no longer a question of what happened in 2016 or 2018, it is a question of what will happen in 2030.

Why didn't the DPS obstruct the recent vote on the 2025 budget if it announced that it would not allow the state parliament to work until the Constitutional Committee's conclusion on the termination of Dragana Đuranović's judicial function in the Constitutional Court was annulled? Is this a "gentleman's agreement" with the head of the Parliament and New Serbian Democracy, Mr. Mandić, due to the fact that his party, after a series of obstructions, withdrew and allowed the formation of the government in Budva of which you are a part?

No. Nor can the situation that happened in Budva be part of any political agreement. The Budva issue was a question of whether democracy even exists in Montenegro anymore and whether it makes sense to go to the elections, or whether the government is formed depending on who manages to introduce more people into a certain institution faster and more effectively.

On the other hand, the unilateral expulsion of opposition MPs by Andrija Mandić was a clear provocation aimed at preventing the stabilization of political conditions. That was a message, first and foremost, to (the Prime Minister) Milojko Spajić, which Mandić publicly announced when he said that the removal was “a message to those who think they can negotiate with a part of the parliamentary majority”, by which he wanted to provoke further radicalization and instability. Although destruction and chaos in Montenegro are the sole intention of Andrija Mandić’s policy, this is not the case with the Montenegrin opposition. That is why we did not fall for this provocation. However, if this kind of policy prevails in the parliamentary majority, then we will be forced to respond by standing in the way of the government’s demolition of institutions. Agreements on a joint opposition response in the event of such a scenario are underway.

Will the DPS MPs who were given a fifteen-day suspension from the plenary assembly hall return to parliamentary sessions after their "sentence" expires? What will the DPS's actions be based on in the current political circumstances, and what will you insist on?

We have said many times - there will be no regular work of the Parliament and no participation of the opposition in the uninterrupted and daily work until the decision on the unconstitutional retirement of a judge of the Constitutional Court is annulled. Fulfilling this condition is a matter of the existence of the rule of law in Montenegro. With that, I have essentially answered your question, but let me clarify once again: if there is no agreement between the opposition and the government by the expiration of the deadline for removal from the plenary assembly hall, we will continue with actions aimed at stopping the government and returning their behavior to the framework of the legal order.

DPS has repeatedly stated that your party will not give minority support to anyone in Budva. What positions should DPS get and when, and will your party get any positions in the executive or legislative branches in Budva? If so, which ones?

This is the principled position of DPS, which applies not only to Budva, but at all levels. I am also aware that your question is attractive because it is certainly of interest to the largest number of readers, but still - no matter how difficult and perhaps impossible it may seem in the current political environment, the division of functions is not a priority for DPS when it comes to Budva. Our goal is, above all, to stabilize the political and social situation in the city, which has gone through four election cycles in four years that have brought Budva to a state of anarchy. Also, our goal is to see a qualitative difference in development in those areas where DPS is part of the government compared to those where we are the opposition. These are the basic priorities, and to achieve these goals, quality people are needed, which DPS has in abundance in Budva.

You say that “the division of functions is not a priority.” Does this mean that you will not participate in the local executive and that you will not have positions in the local legislative house (besides the councilors)?

I already answered - for the realization of the ambitious platform he offered Nikola Jovanovic Quality staff will be necessary in local government. What I can say with certainty is that DPS's personnel selection is the best - not only in Budva, but also in Montenegro.

Why was it not controversial for your party to agree on a government with the list "Budva naš grad" whose informal leader is Mr. Milo Božović, whom the Special State Prosecutor's Office, in several criminal proceedings, charges with being part of organized criminal groups that smuggled cocaine internationally? How did you come to cooperate after the assessments made two years ago, that transcripts of communication from the "Skaj" application "suggest" that Božović is "a member of the 'škaljari' criminal group"?

The leader of the list "Budva our city" is the current mayor of Budva, Nikola Jovanović. Secondly, this is a new local and, above all, civic list, which participated in the elections for the first time and achieved an excellent result by winning both rounds of the Budva elections. And thirdly - as we have already announced, in every city where we have the opportunity, we will send the current parliamentary majority from the state level to the opposition, and in the plan of achieving this goal, all allies are welcome. As I said, we did this in Budva, and very soon we will do it in Nikšić.

Doesn't it bother you that Mr. Jovanović has repeatedly stated that he and his list have not "given up on Božović", that they "never forget a friend" and that they will "always support him"?

The leader of the list "Budva our city" is Nikola Jovanović, not Milo Božović, and I have already told you that. Mr. Božović has been in custody for almost two years and he faces some long court proceedings. I will not go into the personal relations between Mr. Jovanović and Božović.

On what basis do you claim that the alleged leader of the Zemun clan, Luka Bojović, "participated in the formation of the government in Podgorica"? How exactly did he participate, do you have evidence for that, if so - what is it and have you forwarded it to the prosecution? If so - when, if not - why?

This is one of the statements I recently made as a result of certain information I have. Also, according to the information I have, Bojović was not the only one who put pressure on Jakov Milatović, but rather it was a broader action by the combined forces of individuals from the field of organized crime and certain individuals from the Church who are former members of certain security services of the Republic of Serbia.

Allow me to ask you and the public a rhetorical question by reminding you of the context of the event. Namely, Jakov Milatović actively obstructed the formation of the Government of Milojko Spajić, after which he left the PES, with harsh qualifications at the expense of the Prime Minister and the work of that party. Their separation resulted in the shortening of his mandate in the capital and the departure for the early local elections in which Mr. Milatović ran as the leader of the coalition list “For a Better Podgorica”. In that campaign, as you remember, he ran from anti-government positions, with sharper criticism of local and state authorities even than the DPS. Mr. Milatović continued in the same tone after the local elections, with constant criticism of the parliamentary majority and the statement of the Movement for Podgorica of December 22, in which it was clearly stated that there would be no negotiations with those who violate the Constitution. However, on December 26, not only negotiations took place, but also a final agreement on the formation of a new local government in Podgorica. Do you think that such a political turn, and the end of Mr. Milatović's political career, could have been made without serious external pressure that led to a complete change of views in just 48 hours? Of course not. What I think about the structures behind these pressures, I have spoken publicly.

Why didn't you provide evidence for that information and submit it to the prosecution?

Because we have filed dozens of criminal reports with concrete evidence, disputed contracts with the prosecutor's office, and we have never received any response to any of them. When the prosecutor's office earns our trust through concrete action, then the activity you are suggesting will make sense again.

Do you share Mr. Djukanovic's assessment that the State Department's policy enabled the emergence of a "Serbian world" and that the policy of the West and the US towards the Western Balkans was "completely wrong" and "pro-Russian"?

The US policy in the region is clearly aimed at attempts to separate the interests of Serbia and Russia, which should result in the de facto or de iure recognition of Kosovo's independence. In this context, one gets the impression that there is a willingness on the part of the US administration to tolerate certain undemocratic behaviors of official Belgrade not only in Serbia, but also towards its regional neighbors. Washington's intention to enable stability in the region by normalizing relations between Serbia and Kosovo is understood in Belgrade as a license for aggressive behavior that results in the destruction of the sovereignty of neighboring states and projections of a "Serbian world", which is nothing more than a euphemism for "greater Serbia". Such a policy also results in political instability in Montenegro, which we as a society have been living through for five years. There is no need to say publicly what I think about such a policy and its effects, as well as how it will end. I do this every time in conversations with American partners.

We advocate for the equality of all religious communities.

Why is the draft DPS program no longer mentioning an independent Orthodox Church in Montenegro? Does this mean that you will no longer deal with church issues?

DPS continuously advocates for equality of religious communities and equality of religious freedoms of citizens, regardless of which religious community they belong to. This is a constant in our political activities. Everything else is a matter of linguistic formulations, but the essence remains the same.

There is nothing mysterious about going to Mićunović's funeral.

Did you and several other senior DPS officials have a place at the funeral of Branislav Bran Mićunović, for decades one of the most powerful people in Montenegro, in April last year?

I am not sure that funerals in Montenegro can be placed in a political context and interpreted from a political angle. I believe that this is one of the customs that transcends the political arena, and I think it is good that it is so. This is the intimate area of ​​the deceased's family, and I think it is not good to bid on it in public, just as I would never comment on anyone's move in that sense on the political scene. I think that, in the final analysis, it is a matter of human, not political, relations. I understand that this affects various intrigues, but there is nothing mysterious about it, nothing more than what is based on the tradition of Montenegro.

We will not hide behind coalitions in Nikšić either.

How will DPS perform in the upcoming elections in Nikšić and who will be the leader of your list?

The decision on the model of participation in the elections will be made, after discussion, by the party bodies. However, as you have seen, we were the only ones on the political scene to participate independently in six local elections last year and achieve excellent results. We believe in our strength and there is no need to hide behind any coalitions. We will demonstrate this strength in Nikšić, where we will achieve the best percentage election result in the series of local elections and make a crucial contribution to bringing about a change of government.

As for the issue of the list leader, that is also a decision that requires a certain internal party procedure. What is certain at this moment is that we have a large number of quality solutions at our disposal, both at the local and state levels, so whoever is chosen as the list leader - I am sure that they will meet the public's expectations.

It was natural to introduce a recall procedure

Why is DPS only now introducing a detailed procedure for impeaching the president into its Statute, what do you intend to achieve with this provision, and do you believe that this ties your hands, as the head of DPS?

The statute elaborates on the recall procedure in more detail, but not only the party president but also the president of municipal committees at the local level. As you know, the recall procedure naturally follows the election procedure for a certain position. Accordingly, since the election procedure has changed, we used to have indirect elections, and then we switched to the modality of direct intra-party elections - it was natural that the provisions regarding recall should also be changed. And that is all the truth regarding this part of the change in statutory norms.