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Familiar Balkan Turbulence Strikes Just As Montenegro's Landmark Government Takes Off

By Andy Heil December 04, 2020

Its ostensible target was Belgrade, and it was almost certainly an intended broadside against Podgorica's new government.

But the diplomatic expulsion amid a back-and-forth in the Balkans has instead laid bare fault lines that are likely to keep rattling the political landscape in one of Europe's youngest states for some time.

It is just one of the outward signs that tremors loom for the tiny Adriatic coastal state of Montenegro as a fledgling ruling coalition is set to take on three decades of entrenched power; a dominant church led from abroad is maneuvering to replace a bishop credited with helping flip the country's recent elections; and obstacles continue to block membership in a European Union that is grappling with its own internal questions about commitments to the rule of law.

All of it as Montenegro's 620,000 citizens experience government without President Milo Djukanovic's Democrat Party of Socialists (DPS) for the first time in their 14 years of independence.

The ousted Social Democrats had led every Montenegrin government dating back to the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s -- longer if you count the 45 years of rule by the League of Communists that it succeeded.

Their run ended when a vote of confidence in the National Assembly on December 4 propelled three awkwardly matched political groupings -- a pro-Serbian, a center-right, and a green bloc -- into government three months after elections on August 30.

They hold a one-vote majority after campaigning to shed the political and economic stagnation, corruption, and state ties to organized crime that many Montenegrins blame on Djukanovic and his DPS.

Balkan Games?

Just a week before the vote in parliament, the Montenegrin Foreign Ministry declared the ambassador from neighboring Serbia persona non grata, sparking friction in Podgorica and Belgrade.

It cited Ambassador Vladimir Bozovic's "long and continuous interference" in Montenegrin affairs and "behavior and statements incompatible with the usual, acceptable standards of diplomatic office."

It elicited an initial announcement of a response in kind by Belgrade before Serbian officials reconsidered and avoided rising to the bait.

"What's happened now with the expulsion of the Serbian ambassador in Podgorica was not at all directed against Belgrade or [Serbian President Aleksandar] Vucic," says Dusan Reljic, a Southeastern Europe analyst for the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. "It was Djukanovic's move to hurt and perhaps motivate the opposition that's now taking over as a majority government into some rash action."

Other analysts called it "a parting gesture" timed to hinder the new government and a tactic by the still-powerful Djukanovic to maintain support with the kind of "tough stance toward Serbia" that he has exploited well for years.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/familiar -balkan-turbulence-strikes-just-as-montenegro-s- landmark-government-takes-off/30984493.html

Copyright (c) 2020. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.