The president of the Budućnost Voli basketball club, Dragan Bokan, is close to deciding to run for the position of president of the Basketball Association of Montenegro.
The elections for the new leader of the Montenegrin "queen of games" are scheduled for June 13th, and Dragan Kadić is the only one who has submitted his candidacy so far.
It is very possible, however, that he will have an opponent, and a very serious one at that - a man who has been at the helm of the largest basketball and one of the largest sports teams in Montenegro for almost a decade and a half, the 2018 ABA League champion, a Euroleague participant and the leader in the regional competition table in the recently completed regular season.
"I am seriously considering running and will make a decision soon," said Bokan, pointing out that he received the initiative to run from a large number of clubs - those who are concerned about the state of Montenegrin basketball and the way the Federation has been managed recently.
"If I assess that things in the Basketball Association can be improved in a way that the Basketball Association can be what its basic role is - a service to clubs, a service for the development of basketball, I will run," Bokan added.
The statute of the Basketball Association of Montenegro allows the president of a club to also be the head of the Basketball Association - which means that Bokan, if he runs and wins the elections, could continue to lead the largest domestic club.
The statute also states that when electing the president of the Basketball Association of Montenegro, "candidates are proposed to the Assembly by the Board of Directors of the KSCG, as well as 10 KSCG member clubs if they have a proposal for a candidate for president."
Kadić's candidacy, as stated two days ago, was supported by “over 30 clubs.” The Assembly of the Basketball Association of Montenegro has as many as 92 delegates.
And what is the situation in the Montenegrin Basketball Association - it's as if a bomb had fallen on it!
People close to the company "Bemax" (sponsor of several clubs in Montenegro, but with an unofficially much wider range of influence) appoint and dismiss management people, it was not a secret even two years ago, and it is even less so now, so recently, according to well-informed sources, they have also played with the legend, Jelena Dubljević.
With their great support, the greatest Montenegrin basketball player of all time, a year and a half ago, in a close election race, defeated and replaced another legend, Nikola Peković (42 to 38 votes, that was the ratio at the Electoral Assembly), only to have those same people literally "throw her chair away" after just 18 months, because she obviously did not want to work according to their instructions.
The media wrote that the most reproach to her was that she did not dismiss coach Jelena Škerović, who led the Montenegrin women's national team to the eighth consecutive EuroBasket, as well as that she did not fire several former teammates who work at KSCG. These are not, of course, her only "sins".
After a sufficient number of delegates submitted a request for the removal of Jelena Dubljević, the former Los Angeles Sparks basketball player from the strongest NBA league, she resigned herself.
"I am faced with a brutal and unfounded campaign whose ultimate goal is to degrade my personality and business results, of which I am extremely proud," she said, among other things.
What she did not say was that this campaign, mostly through unsigned texts, was coordinated by the very "media" close to the people with whose support she came to the helm of the KSCG.
Just such "media" launched the news a few days ago that the Board of Directors of the Association met and that the proposal for Dragan Bokan to be a candidate for president of the Association - did not pass.
A few hours later, a denial was received from the same meeting by members of the Board of Directors.
"We hereby inform you that proposing a candidate for president of the Federation was not the topic of the meeting of the Board of Directors, which was attended by 10 members, nor was any name mentioned with the aim of running for office," the KSCG emphasized.
The statement was signed by board members Haris Ramović, Željka Ratković, Milivoje Miki Cerović, Nikola Dabović, Siniša Boričić, Zoran Milovanović, Nemanja Vranješ and former president of the Serbian Communist Party of Montenegro Jelena Dubljević.
In addition to the eight of them, the members of the Board of Directors in the still current convocation are the lawyer of the company "Bemax" Zoran Piperović, the only one who attended the meeting of the Board of Directors and did not sign the response ("I see that all members of the Board of Directors signed the denial except me", he said in his response), the former co-owner of the company Aleksandar Mihailović, and the presidents of Budućnost and Mornar, Dragan Bokan and Đorđije Pavicevic.
In the context of the turbulent events in the leadership of Montenegrin basketball in the past days and months, there is also a rather strong statement by the Minister of Sports, Dragoljub Šćekić, who said that "they want to give primacy over Montenegrin basketball to "structures that are mentioned from the criminal milieu", "structures that are mentioned from the business milieu", "structures that are mixed", "structures that present themselves as businesses and behind them are various criminal activities".
"The Basketball Federation and the basketball community must not allow such phenomena to occur. The Federation should be headed by a person who is independent, professional and who will do everything to ensure that the Federation functions in the best way and who will repel the influence of all these zones," said Šćekić, a guest on the "Perspektiva" show on Newsmax Balkans.
Who he was referring to when he mentioned "criminal structures" is unknown.
However, the upcoming elections in the Basketball Association can also be seen as a dilemma as to whether these "side effects" will be reduced or completely eliminated.
The candidacy of Kadić, who has been in basketball for a long time, albeit not in leadership positions (he was the first to introduce statistics in basketball matches, has been using a computer off the court for more than two decades, and is employed by Elektroprivreda), is also presented as the candidacy of a "neutral" - someone who will reconcile both sides, following the "pattern" of the previous elections, both those who voted for Jelena Dubljević (42) and those who voted for Nikola Peković (38).
If that is indeed the case, then Kadić really has a good chance of leading the Basketball Association in the coming period.
If, however, Bokan decides to run, things change drastically - someone who has been one of the most influential figures on the Montenegrin basketball scene for almost 15 years, who is strong enough to reject all other "influences", could probably attract those clubs that allegedly "promised" Kadić.
In other words, he wouldn't just jump into the presidential race.
But that is already a matter of electoral combinatorics. There is only a good chance that the race for the commander-in-chief in the Serbian Armed Forces of Montenegro will take on the characteristics of a serious electoral race - a race between two Dragans.
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