With each new year, it is confirmed that the independence of Montenegro was a superior choice.
This was told to "Vijesti" by civic activist Dina Bajramspahić on the occasion of the 19th anniversary of the restoration of Montenegrin statehood.
She said that this year may be the easiest to give such a decisive assessment.
"When we see the last five years, how slow progress is being made, how reforms are being implemented with difficulty or not at all, how all the negative practices of the previous establishment are being used with gusto, how the new authorities do not show a qualitative difference in their substance, how war criminals are being glorified, we see that everything that is being blamed on 'independence' has nothing to do with independence, but with political elites with limited capacities. It is becoming increasingly obvious how overwhelming the choice of an independent state is, and that we have avoided spending another two decades in a creation that is trapped in a labyrinth from which it sees no way out," Bajramspahić assessed.
According to her, the best answer to what the 2006 independence referendum was was the answer to the question of where Montenegro would be if it had remained in a common state with Serbia.
"The scenario is extremely depressing," the interviewee claims.
However, as she added, although there are countless urgent problems in Montenegro, it is high time to overcome "the alienated and servile attitude of citizens towards the government, with an outstretched hand expecting crumbs."
"After state emancipation, emancipation at the individual level is necessary and the creation of assumptions that the majority of citizens are not dependent on the government," said Bajramspahić.
Montenegro's privilege, she said, which is so small, is that every citizen is worth much more and can have a much greater, even decisive, influence on decisions at both the local and national levels. She adds that no Englishman, German, or any self-aware citizen of the world would ever say: "What does Britain/Germany need independence for, it's better if it doesn't exist," and similar things, just because they are dissatisfied with some public policies or social problems.
"No one in Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, Croatia, Slovenia would say that... Not because it is a taboo issue - nothing should be a taboo issue - but because nowhere is the position of the citizen as helpless as here, who looks at the state as a distant Olympus with which he has no connection. On the contrary, since the French Revolution (1789), the 'citizen' has known that the connection between the quality of his life and public policies is inseparable and that he/she is a subject in that process, not an object," Bajramspahić underlines.
She states that she believes that instead of an inferior attitude towards governing structures, citizens must have a proactive attitude towards problems and recognize their responsibility and obligation to get involved in solving social problems.
"There is a direct connection between the actions of citizens and the quality of government, or in other words - our state is what we are. No matter how frustrating that may sound," she says.
It states that the above absolutely does not abolish any authority's key responsibilities - institutional, criminal, moral, but that it returns sovereignty to the hands of those to whom it formally and essentially belongs - as was the case on May 21, 2006.
"Strengthening the position of citizens in Montenegrin society is an absolute prerequisite for solving all other problems. However, as throughout our history, the government still prefers to look down on the population and instead of structurally solving problems - it chooses clientelism, nepotism, populism and partitocracy, keeping a good number of citizens subordinate, in the hope that something will happen to them. The government is not the only one to blame for the lack of integrity and civic courage. That is why the image of the state - the image of ourselves", concluded Bajramspahić.
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