Good morning! In recent months, my Twitter feed has been flooded with rather superficial and somewhat frenetic enthusiasm for the political figure of Nikola Jovanovic and the duo said to be running Budva. Although I was optimistic at the start of their term, it seems to me that the first eight months of the new administration have brought no real new value to Montenegro’s political scene. I’ll try to explain why I’m disappointed and why I believe that the Jovanovic & Odzic office has nothing genuinely new to offer.
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Is Budva’s local government an alternative to the national one – and why not?
Budva’s political scene has long ceased to be just Budva’s business. Although many people across Montenegro may not realise it, the reason lies in the city’s unusually high concentration of money and power for such a small place. In the public imagination, Budva has become a symbol of overdevelopment, urban chaos, kitsch, and tackiness — stereotypes not found elsewhere, even though the city is no more or less damaged by unplanned growth and poor taste than other Montenegrin towns. The difference was simply that Budva had more money and more opportunities. And this didn’t start in the 1990s — Budva once had one of the highest GDPs per capita in the former Yugoslavia, matched by generous local government spending per resident.
The Budva municipality was always open to newcomers, so all political parties used it to secure jobs for their activists from across Montenegro. That’s how Nikola Jovanovic arrived — as a Democratic People’s Party (DNP) appointee of Milan Knezevic. He quickly connected with local politicians and showed strong loyalty to Milo Bozovic during a very challenging period. His resilience and loyalty paid off: he managed to defeat the much more powerful Democratic Front (DF), backed by significant state resources from both Montenegro and Serbia.
This gave him considerable political room to maneuver, and he showed personal courage by refusing to form a coalition with the DF — a move that went against parts of Budva’s street scene closely linked to Belgrade circles. Yet Jovanovic is hardly without roots, considering what we now know about Milo Bozovic and his ties to the underworld.
Jovanovic is one of the few Serbian politicians in Montenegro who managed to strike a political deal with the DPS and SDP without losing support among his base.
His connection with the SDP was helped by the fact that the party had been a loyal partner to the DF after the 2016 elections — and Odzic himself served as finance secretary under Mayor Bato Carevic, even during the turbulent Belveder protests and Carevic’s bulldozer politics in Ocinici.
The DPS and SDP had to make a few symbolic concessions, but so did Jovanovic. He allowed the municipality to celebrate 21 May under state symbols, while in return, Petar Odzic celebrated with Baja Mali Knindza and travelled to Slovenia to honour the “victims of revolutionary terror” at Zidani Most.
Jovanovic also supported exhibitions and initiatives by the Centre for Civic Education (CGO) that address the crimes of the 1990s — something he himself would have once dismissed as “Second Serbia” liberalism. That’s no small step forward.
But none of this is hindsight; it’s all well-known. What prompted me to conclude that they are not an alternative to the national government was the local administration’s response to the Slovenska Beach investment. I’m not referring to whether one supports or opposes the project — I’m talking about the silence and political opportunism that surrounded it.
That’s why the question from today’s headline is justified: What new value have we gained? How does their behaviour differ from that of PES’s dealings with Andrija Mandic, or DPS/SDP+SD, LP coalitions at the local level? Mandic makes occasional concessions, and Spajic is increasingly taking on a Montenegrin identity. So, what gives Jovanovic’s partners the moral right to decide when and how it’s acceptable to cooperate with Vucic’s agents in Montenegro? If Mandic had responded to DPS’s flirtations in 2023, would we now be singing hymns to the “conciliatory Andrija Mandic” the way we praise Nikola Jovanovic?
In the end, is the only measure of a radical’s acceptability that the SDP now finds them desirable, and the DPS somewhat acceptable?
That’s all for today. We wish you a pleasant rest of the day.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM analyst and columnist
(Columnists’ opinions and views do not necessarily reflect those of CdM’s editorial team)