{"id":1044,"date":"2020-12-04T17:33:44","date_gmt":"2020-12-04T17:33:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=132626"},"modified":"2020-12-04T17:33:44","modified_gmt":"2020-12-04T17:33:44","slug":"familiar-balkan-turbulence-strikes-just-as-montenegros-landmark-government-takes-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/04\/familiar-balkan-turbulence-strikes-just-as-montenegros-landmark-government-takes-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Familiar Balkan Turbulence Strikes Just As Montenegro’s Landmark Government Takes Off"},"content":{"rendered":"
Its ostensible target was Belgrade, and it was almost certainly an intended broadside against Podgorica’s new government.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Balkan Games?<\/strong><\/big><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.”<\/p>\n It elicited an initial announcement of a response in kind by Belgrade before Serbian officials reconsidered and avoided rising to the bait<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n “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.”<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n