CIN-CG Roundtable: Citizens more democratic than the elite

No - is the short answer of writer Balša Brković, to the question of the roundtable Does the Montenegrin Political Class Inherit European Values ​​from Culture to the Rule of Law, which the Center for Investigative Reporting of Montenegro (CIN-CG) organized on December 18th, at the Holton Hotel, in Podgorica.

"I see the political elite as a group of fraudsters. They say we need to rediscover America, but in Montenegro we have to constantly rediscover Europe so that these values ​​become the foundation of this society," said Brković.

In her introductory speech, CIN-CG President Milka Tadić Mijović said: "In our country, the political elite does not predominantly practice democratic values. However, it is important to point out that society as a whole is more democratic and European than its political class. The majority of citizens want membership in the European Union and the changes it entails."

"The goal of this roundtable is to open space for dialogue and to contribute to the answer to the question: how to achieve a political class that will enable essential reforms, functional institutions and a real transition towards a stable, democratic and European Montenegro," said Tadić Mijović.

European rule number one is that institutions support the rule of law, said Tea Gorjanc Prelević, director of the Human Rights Action (HRA) at the opening of the first panel - Rule of Law: Economy, Anti-Corruption and Sustainable Development, citing the example of the lack of institutions in Montenegro and their partisan captivity.

She warned that there are no war crimes verdicts, and that there are no investigations and indictments that include command responsibility. "The fight against hate speech is invisible. I don't see that institutions are doing anything to prevent hate speech," said Gorjanc Prelević, warning about the current amendments to the Law on Internal Affairs, which she assessed as a path to party police: "It is a Stalinist method of cadreing the police."

Speaking about the economy, the executive director of Fidelity Consulting, Miloš Vuković, announced that VAT in Montenegro accounts for 50 percent of total budget revenues, while the average in the EU is 16 percent. "Our main source of budget revenue is VAT, which generates inflation. We don't have factories, we don't have exports, but we have VAT. And citizens pay for that. The state doesn't live off what it produces, but off what citizens spend," said Vuković.

Mladen Grgić, a teaching associate at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Montenegro (UCG), said that the budget is smaller or stagnant in all development segments. "There are no investments because we do not seek them, nor do we want them. Instead, the ruling elite wants investors with whom they make political agreements in advance," said Grgić, citing the cases of Ulcinj and the Budva Riviera as examples.

"There have been numerous missed opportunities in the last five years, so Milo Đukanović can still wear watches. We missed the case of Vesna Medenica as an excellent reason for vetting," stressed Dejan Milovac, deputy executive director of the Network for the Affirmation of the Non-Governmental Sector (MANS). "EU membership is being emphasized as an end in itself, and we as a society are not using it for reforms," ​​Milovac concluded.

Jelena Popović from the Montenegrin Society of Ecologists (CDE) pointed out that Montenegro only inherits European values ​​on paper. Speaking about the wrong perception of nature protection, she said that "nature should be equally valuable on Durmitor and Gorica."

Biljana Maslovarić, professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Montenegro, spoke about how form has taken over essence in education at the opening of the second panel - Education, health, electoral system, political parties and ideologies.

Speaking about the devastating attitudes of young people towards violence, Maslovarić said that we now have the results of neglect in education and recalled that Civic Education in primary and secondary schools was abolished in 2016.

"Education is permanently suppressed, but we will get an education – and we are among the worst in terms of education. We got a double whammy," said the professor.

"There is no quality control in the healthcare system. We are aware that there are those in healthcare with a knowledge deficit, but the system does nothing about it. When we have a system that does not want to deal with its own problems, then you have so many deaths that could have been avoided," said Milena Popović Samardžić, president of the Medical Doctors' Union. She warned that Montenegro is not even learning from such cases, and that we are entering a dangerous situation of normalizing cases of patient deaths that could have been avoided.

Speaking about the 16 million euros allocated to political parties, Dragan Koprivica, executive director of the Center for Democratic Transition (CDT), said that this prevents any new party from operating seriously: "I'm not talking about extracting money from the system, which is ten times larger." He added that "affirmative action also does not give a chance to new minority parties. And that's another monopoly."

That as a society we do not learn from our mistakes, claims Srđan Perić, leader of the Preokret Movement. "If you show responsibility, admit your mistake, you have died in Montenegrin politics. And that should be the beginning of changes and improvements. We have made politics possible only for party-crats. Decent people do not want to go into politics. So who will change things then?"

"The current regime is a continuation of the old regime. It is a mutation of the same regime," said Rade Bojović, from the Civic Initiative 21 May. Explaining that this is the same dilettantism that has turned politics into a populist circus. "If this is not stopped, we should not expect anything better," said Brajović.

Economist and former MP Zarija Pejović also claims that this government is a legacy of the past. "It was important for the DPS to destroy every civic party in Montenegro. In the last decade, civic Montenegro has been destroyed. Now we also have the personnel destruction of institutions at work."

Lawyer and former MP Miodrag Iličković recalled the tradition - the right to plunder after the battle: "This is all a product of that. So we have a constant of that policy. They are hiding the monument to Pavle Đurišić, and we are like looking for it." Iličković asked what will happen when we enter the EU. "Cross. Everything that is good will leave this country. Who will stay?" Iličković asks.