Montenegrins have to be in their 40s to remember politics before Milo Djukanovic
was one of Europe’s youngest leaders. Thirty years later Milo Djukanovic, president of Montenegro and still only 57, has been in power, as either president, prime minister or just as ruling-party boss, for longer than anyone else in Europe. Montenegrins have to be in their 40s to remember politics before him. Other European leaders want to know the secret of his success. Unfortunately, he says, there is no simple explanation.
He might not have the choice. For the past nine weeks thousands of people have been taking to the streets of Podgorica, Montenegro’s capital, to demand that Mr Djukanovic step down. Yet he seems unfazed. In 2016, he says, a Russian-financed plot aimed to assassinate him and now the Russians are causing trouble again, even if many of the demonstrators do not realise who is stirring the political pot. Nonsense, scoffs Dejan Mijovic, an opposition politician.
However the Knezevic affair and the opposition demonstrations play out, Mr Djukanovic’s political survival is remarkable. In 1989 he was a protégé of Slobodan Milosevic, the then Serbian leader. But as Mr Milosevic faced defeat in the war over Kosovo, Mr Djukanovic pivoted towards championing the restoration of Montenegro’s independence, lost in 1918 when Yugoslavia was created. He achieved this in 2006, and yet managed to maintain Montenegro as a Balkan rarity—a multi-ethnic state.
A secret of his own success is clientelism. One official claimed back in 2012 in a leaked tape that every public-sector job given out secures four votes for the ruling party. Still, the recent demonstrations show that a lot of people are fed up with Mr Djukanovic. In recent years, says Daliborka Uljarevic, an analyst, there has been a change of atmosphere. Anyone who dares to criticise the government risks being labelled “an enemy of the state” by the pro-government media, as she has been.
The political atmosphere is toxic and the ruling party and its allies control only 42 of parliament’s 81 seats. Tycoons from Azerbaijan, Russia, Malaysia and thehave bought up property and developed luxury seaside resorts; but many folk feel that, as they struggle on low salaries and poor public services, a tiny group around Mr Djukanovic has got rich. Somerset Maugham once called the French Riviera “a sunny place for shady people”. One might say much the same about Montenegro.
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