Uljarević: Protest culture is still being built in Montenegro and it is going very slowly

In Montenegro, the protest culture is still being built and it is going on painstakingly, especially when it comes to protests that have a civic and progressive character, said Daliborka Uljarević, executive director of the Center for Civic Education (CCE), at the conference Civic Mobilization as a Response to Institutional Deficit, organized today by CCE and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES).

Uljarević said that she is pleased with the movements in the region, regardless of all the differences, both in structure and in the achievements so far, and that she also sees this as a success of civil society, which has been working dedicatedly for decades to empower citizens to demand that institutions work in the public, not party and particular, interest.

"When it comes to Montenegro, the case of the informal student movement "Kamo śutra" is specific in that it managed to transform from a relatively small base into a mobilizational resistance to institutional cynicism and security collapse," said Uljarević, adding that, as expected, pressure, labeling, attempts at discrediting and targeting followed.

The Kamo śutra movement, as she pointed out, emerged as hope and inspiration and proof that young people, who are not really counted on in Montenegrin society, can initiate some processes, while today it is a reminder that pressure from below had and can have strength, but also that it should be preserved, spread and not allowed to be suffocated by fear or apathy.

"The protest culture is still being built in Montenegro, and it is going very slowly, especially when it comes to protests that have a civic, progressive character," Uljarević believes.

She added that what is happening in Serbia did not happen overnight.

"There were many mass protests until it matured into the current situation," said Uljarević.

Therefore, as she pointed out, the protests of the Kamo śutra movement should be seen as a symptom, indicator and symbol of a deeper process taking place in Montenegrin society, a process that already shows that citizens are in many ways more mature than those who are supposed to lead them and make decisions on their behalf.

This movement, as Uljarević said, emerged from an authentic need to react to injustice, and its initiators were not looking for anything radical.

She assessed that their demands were very reasonable and added that the government itself, in a different reality, would promote all of this as a reform agenda.

"Instead of a responsible response, they received a panicked, defensive, and then an offensive attack, the tone of which was set by party narrow-mindedness and the visible alienation of the highest state officials from the citizens," said Uljarević.

She recalled that CG Puls, a survey conducted in February by CCE and DAMAR, shows that only 35,8 percent of citizens believe that Montenegro is moving in the right direction, which is a significant drop compared to the previous year.

In the same period, as she stated, almost half of citizens - 49,3 percent - describe the situation in the country as negative or unstable, and the dominant feeling is concern.

"When we add to this that 56,7 percent of citizens believe that someone must bear responsibility for the events of January 1 in Cetinje, we get a picture of a society in which the demand for responsibility has become a general, cross-party sentiment. Kamo śutra was actually the catalyst for that feeling," said Uljarević.

She added that the movement's recognition was enormous, that as many as 86 percent of citizens had heard of it, that 17,4 percent participated, and 61,1 percent of citizens supported their demands.

"This is important data in a regional framework for any youth movement, especially without a party or, in our circumstances, church infrastructure," Uljarević said.

According to her, the significance of these protests is not whether they achieved concrete results – they broke through apathy and showed that there is active social potential, and that is a stake for the future.

She said that the citizen protests in the first quarter of this year in Montenegro, as well as those related to agreements with the United Arab Emirates, send three key messages "that institutions without trust are politically empty and that this cannot be replaced by PR, but only by proven responsibility, that the generational voice can be disruptive, but also constructive - if it is given space and support, and that civil pressure is not a whim, but a corrective mechanism of democracy."

As Uljarević said, the key question today is not why Kamo śutra fell apart, but whether society will find new ways to exert democratic pressure to control the government.

"The answer to that does not depend on the institutions, they have already shown what they think. The answer depends on all of us, or rather on whether we will remain silent or act," Uljarević stated.

Professor at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade, Dušan Spasojević, said that what is happening now in Serbia "is not a pumpkin without roots and did not come from nowhere."

"If we speak from the perspective of an institutional deficit, we can understand these protests through what happened after the mass murder at the Vladislav Ribnikar Elementary School and in Mladenovac," said Spasojević, adding that there was no institutional reaction and that only one minister, Branko Ružić, resigned, and that the inquiry committee, which was formed in the Serbian Parliament, was dissolved.

"When the canopy in Novi Sad fell and when (Aleksandar) Vučić and others started explaining how everything had been renovated, except for that canopy, anger poured out onto the streets," Spasojević said.

He said that the plenum model of direct democracy has been used several times in Serbia, but not with this duration, emphasizing that protests in Serbia are characterized by an insistence on the absence of leaders.

"Students are persistent in not allowing those who are recognizable to the public to be in the foreground," said Spasojević, adding that this does not mean that there are no influential people in the plenum, but that it is very balanced.

He explained that protests in Serbia are also characterized by isolation, or distance, initially only towards political parties.

"Later, that distance began to be built towards everything, and that is a tendency that was criticized a lot. Students built a wall around themselves, wanting it to be their authentic rebellion and wanting to isolate themselves from everything," added Spasojević.

Speaking about the future of protests in Serbia, Spasojević also mentions the possibility of a "Montenegrin scenario."

"What do I mean by that? I think that the moment the Serbian Progressive Party falls, there will be a complete change in the political scene and that some new actors will appear, whose identities are now very difficult to predict," said Spasojević.

He expressed optimism that space will open up for liberal, pro-European and civic ideas to be stronger than they are now.

Irena Cvetković, a researcher from North Macedonia, said that the protests in that country did not begin with the tragedy in a disco in Kočani, when 62 young people were killed and more than 200 injured, but with the murder of a young girl, Frosina Kulakova, who was run over while crossing a pedestrian crossing.

Cveković said that, after the tragedy in Kočani, they wondered "who is next".

She stated that the "Colored Revolution", the resistance to the then ruling party in North Macedonia, was creative, very loud, and in a way entertaining, but that it also had a very clear role.

Cvetković added that they believed in transformation and that the focus was on overthrowing the then government. "What's different here is that this reminded us more of a funeral than a protest, people walked in silence, holding candles," Cvetković explained.

Responding to questions from the discussion participants, she said that she does not think that the protests in North Macedonia will lead to a change of government, but that they will shake and destroy the illusion that everything is fine in that country.

"We regret it, but we also demand responsibility, we want to know who is to blame and how this happened," Cvetković emphasized.

She assessed that, unfortunately, "only tragedies can bring us out onto the streets, and that it is a phenomenon that describes the state of our societies."

CCE Program Director Petar Đukanović believes that in the region, especially in Montenegro, Serbia and North Macedonia, political parties do not strengthen institutions, but use them for their own goals.

"Instead of vision, capacity and responsibility, populism dominates, and institutions are becoming a space for corruption and influence peddling, which is now already visibly costing human lives," Đukanović assessed.

He emphasized that protest is an important form of civic mobilization through which an attempt is made to correct the disturbed balance of power and remind the authorities that legitimacy does not come only from the ballot box, but also from everyday accountability to the public.

Therefore, as he emphasized, civic mobilization today represents perhaps the last barrier to the disintegration of social trust.

According to Đukanović, active citizens are facing campaigns of intimidation, discrediting and accusations, as well as narratives that link protests, as well as critics, to foreign services or criminal organizations.

"We are also witnessing the misuse of public resources to stifle civic mobilization, as well as attempts to present it as a threat, rather than an attempt to heal the state," said Đukanović.

He emphasized that civic mobilization remains one of the rare mechanisms for correcting power and preserving public, professional and accountable institutions, but that it must not be merely reactive.

"This must be a lasting value, built into political culture, encouraged through the education system and enabled by public policies that recognize citizens as active participants in social life, not as passive observers," Đukanović said.

The Director of the Regional Office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Belgrade, Kirsten Schönefeld, emphasized that the topic of the conference is very important and that it points not only to the institutional deficit, but also to changes in the democratic structures of countries in the region, but also beyond.

"We have our experts here today who have analyzed this topic in Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. From today's discussions we will have a publication that we will publish in June," announced Schonefeld.

She said that they want to see what is behind all these processes, what people are looking for, especially young people, and whether it is an institutional deficit or a crisis of representative democracy.

"Perhaps there is a need for new forms of democracy, for direct citizen participation in democracy and a new political culture," said Schonefeld.