Page 46 - bnemagazine bne_December 2021_20211203.pdf

46 I Southeast Europe bne December 2021
Montenegro’s dysfunctional ruling coalition limps on
newly-formed NGO We won't give up Montenegro, set up by academics and intellectuals to support the Serbian Orthodox Church, later joining the For the Future of Montenegro alliance alongside the Democratic Front and smaller rightwing populist parties. Yet two months after the summer 2020 election he acknowledged that a government including ministers from the Democratic Front would lose credibility among international institutions; the party is now trying
to oust him from office.
Exceeding expectations
The diverse make-up of the coalition and the widely diverging agendas of its members led analysts to speculate last year that it would be short-lived and able to achieve little. Yet such prognoses proved to have underestimated the coalition, or at least the strength of the glue holding it together, namely its members’ fierce opposition to the DPS and determination to keep the former ruling party out of power. Moreover, when it came to the issues that did unite its members, the government moved swiftly.
One of the first actions it took was
to scrap the DPS’ church law. The amendments, which were expected after the change of government in 2020, were aimed at removing the articles that provoked objections from the Serbian Orthodox Church and led to increased tensions between Podgorica and Belgrade. According to its critics, the law aimed to strip the Serbian Orthodox Church of hundreds of religious sites
in Montenegro, including medieval monasteries and churches.
A less politically sensitive but even more pressing issue for the new guard in Podgorica was tackling the dire
state of the economy, after the collapse of tourism in 2020 resulted in the deepest contraction of any emerging Europe economy. The finance ministry immediately issued a €750mn eurobond, which Finance Minister Milojko Spajic claimed had saved the country from bankruptcy. It did, however, take months to get the 2021 budget approved by all members of the coalition – a harbinger of the divisions to come later in 2021.
Clare Nuttall in Glasgow
The biggest problem for Montenegro’s government is not its highly antagonistic relationship with President Milo Djukanovic and
the opposition Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), but the deep divisions within its own ranks.
Able to move swiftly on issues that unite its members – such as tackling organised crime and sacking DPS-era appointees from the civil service and judiciary –
it has been hamstrung by the different agendas of the ruling coalition members when it comes to making the reforms needed to move towards EU accession. That was reflected in the latest EU enlargement report, which pointed to
a lack of progress and some backsliding.
The current government led by Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapic came to power in December 2020, four months after the August general election finally put an end to the 30-year monopoly over Montenegrin politics enjoyed by Djukanovic’s DPS, before and after the tiny country declared its independence
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from its union with Serbia in 2006. Krivokapic appointed an almost
entirely technocratic government that was backed by three formations – For the Future of Montenegro, Peace is
Our Nation and Black in White – each comprising various small parties and coalitions. Their political orientation ranges from the hardline pro-Serbia, pro-Russia Democratic Front and Movement for Changes led by Nebojsa Medojevic – a vocal supporter of Donald Trump and other far-right politicians, who has blamed the coronavirus pandemic on satanists and ‘deep state’ paedophiles – to the progressive United Reform Action (URA) civic movement, whose leader, Deputy Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic, was the only party leader accepted by Krivokapic into
his cabinet.
Krivokapic himself is a former university professor who entered politics after the DPS took the fatal misstep of taking on the powerful Serbian Orthodox Church with the adoption of the controversial ‘church law’ in late 2019. He led the