Does anyone really believe that Andrija Mandic will be removed, that anyone in government or outside it genuinely and sincerely wants that? Do you really think a government of national unity would be possible at this point? That PES and the others, less than a year before the elections, would collectively commit political suicide and embark on yet another experiment like Dritan’s minority government?
Andrija Mandic himself is perhaps the most aware of this. Right now, he would probably much rather change his tune. He would forget Ratko Mladic, his Chetnik posturing, and everything else if that were what it took to preserve power and privileges, both for himself and for his party’s army. But he cannot. Once again, I am amazed at how naively people believe that, in politics, anything is possible for political elites and leaders. That they can wake up one morning, change course, and that the masses will blindly follow them.
So many times, during the DPS era, I heard serious people insist that the SNP would step in when needed and jump in to save something for the DPS, but that never happened. Yes, they did it over minor issues and personnel arrangements, but the SNP could never fully deliver what its elites had promised the DPS. Why? Because they knew they would have to face the very people they had spent years indoctrinating.
Nationalism is a tricky beast. Once you feed it to the masses, it is difficult to step off the path you have paved for them and for yourself. Mandic cannot fully deliver on what he is doing now and everything he has promised. He is quite literally the source of every serious crisis facing this government. He and people like Vranes simply cannot restrain themselves because the pressure created by years of indoctrination is enormous.
While their outbursts are rocking the government, the Democrats are doing the same thing, on top of the same underlying reasons, through sheer incompetence. Even if they had handled everything properly regarding the triple murder, people still would not trust them. In Montenegrin public opinion, there is already a deeply ingrained reflex to see them as incompetent and incapable. Whatever happens, from fires to murders, they will be held responsible for it.
PES sometimes seems more concerned with ensuring that Mandic does not lose his reputation as a cooperative partner than with securing its own success. Its electorate is also heavily indoctrinated, but nowhere near the extent seen with NSD, where Milan Knezevic sets the pace.
They simply have to bear in mind that, as time goes by, the pressure on Mandic will only grow stronger. From all sides. From Serbia, he will be pushed to be a bigger Serb than Pipun. From Croatia and elsewhere, he will be pressured to abandon what he fervently believed in until yesterday. Everyone has sensed that he is the weak link, and that this is where the whole thing could come apart at the seams.
Without Mandic, there is no NSD, just as without Spajic there is no PES. At least not their successful versions.
To a considerable extent, this government also benefits from an anemic and discredited opposition. Apart from the DPS and SDP, toward which there is internal resentment and incomplete trust among their partners from outside, all you have is Dritan and URA. A man who is quite obviously under Belgrade’s control, and yet this group of Podgorica hipster oppositionists still puts its faith in him.
There is no real potential for change, except in the event of some kind of extraordinary catastrophic situation.
(Columnists’ opinions and views do not necessarily reflect those of the CdM editorial board)
