Page 64 - bne_Magazine_May_2018_print

64 Opinion bne May 2018
Actions by Montenegro's opposition Democratic Front, including protests that turned violent in October 2015 (pictured) have not helped the party to make headway with voters.
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Almost 30 years after the fall of Communism and despite their ambitions of Euro-Atlantic integration, many Southeast European countries have failed to establish political pluralism and are dominated by single parties and their leaders. This is mostly because of the tools successfully employed by the ruling parties, but the opposition has to bear its share of the responsibility as the numerous small parties seem incapable of setting aside their personal ambitions and working together to beat the status quo.
Montenegro is the most acute example of a hopeless opposition as politics in the tiny country have been dominated by one man, the veteran politician Milo Djukanovic, and his ruling Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) for nearly 30 years.
There is little doubt that Djukanovic will win the upcoming election, putting him back in the presidency for the second time on top of his four terms as prime minister, even though for the first time in Montenegro’s history of independence almost all the opposition parties have decided to back a single candidate, Mladen Bojanic.
However, this move came too late as opposition parties fought for their own interests for most of the past year, and do not seem united by anything other than the hope of finally ousting
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Djukanovic. “The opposition is divided between those who are still angry about the Nato bombings of 1999 and are pro- Russian, and parties which oppose Djukanovic but not the West,” Michael Taylor senior analyst for Eastern Europe at Oxford Analytica, tells bne IntelliNews.
Djukanovic, on the other hand, is the West’s man. Since the beginning of his political career he has made Montenegro’s Euro-Atlantic integration his top political priority.
Boutique formations
In many cases newcomers on Southeast Europe’s political stage seem opportunistic and not driven by any particular ideology or beliefs. There are some exceptions with good potential, but even they can hardly beat the status quo due to lack of infrastructure and influence.
“[Big] parties have built the support infrastructure. They have offices across the country, which a lot of the new movements don’t have, they tend to be just based in the capital or larger cities ... They have the potential, but they don’t necessarily have the support infrastructure,” Cvete Koneska of Control Risks tells bne IntelliNews.
In Bulgaria, for example, former justice minister Hristo Ivanov