Census in Montenegro: Continuation of radical propaganda in the service of creating a state of constituent peoples

By: Nevena Kovačević

The census in Montenegro officially began on Sunday, after two postponements.
Although opposition representatives called for a boycott just three days before the start of the census, claiming that the conditions stipulated by the agreement they signed with Prime Minister Milojko Spajić were not met, different statements followed after the last postponement.

After statements implying that a postponement of only three days was sufficient to fulfill previously unmet conditions, all opposition parties sent calls to citizens to participate in the census and declare freely, instead of the previously announced boycott.

One gets the impression that the civic opposition did not consider whether their sudden decisions could contribute to strengthening citizens' distrust in the entire process. The opposition did not ask themselves whether their calculating changes of stance could result in a decision by a portion of citizens not to participate in a process that has been accompanied by numerous controversies for months.

Although the agreement between the government and the opposition regarding the census is being presented as the result of a well-intentioned dialogue and compromise for the benefit of the state and citizens, everything we have witnessed in recent days indicates that census decisions are more a product of political games and party calculations than of genuine consensus.

Explanations from opposition representatives are missing regarding what happened to the alleged BIA operatives they claimed were engaged in the Statistical Office, how the census results that the Greater Serbian propaganda elite led by Aleksandar Vučić have been waving around for months suddenly became a thing of the past, why we should believe that their formal participation in implementing control mechanisms is a sufficient guarantee of a legitimate census.

The question is also how the process, prepared in advance by Dritan Abazović's government, became a matter of mere statistics a month after the formation of the new government, with no room for abuse, and is being carried out by a government whose controllers are the Chetnik duke Andrija Mandić and the rest of the Russian-Serbian agency, contrary to all recommendations from European partners and the non-governmental sector. It is clear that the story of dialogue ended the moment the census negotiations, by excluding representatives of the civil sector, were reduced to inter-party meetings with the presence of representatives of national councils of smaller nations, with the aim of avoiding the topic of postponing the census until spring, and excluding identity issues and other changes to the census forms.

The results of the census will show how functional the control mechanisms introduced at the request of the opposition are, but it is evident that Milojko Spajić, in cooperation with his coalition partners, played the game with the opposition very wisely, feigning a desire for dialogue and de-escalation of tensions. The truth, however, is quite different.
For Spajić, removing the census from the agenda is more important than the quality of the process itself, and the minority supporters of his government have agreed to all postponements and alleged concessions at the expense of the opposition because they are clearly not afraid that the newly introduced mechanisms will disrupt their long-projected results.

The Role of the Opposition

One of the current issues is whether the opposition will take responsibility in case of eventual abuses, and the scenario of a partial boycott, which, as a result of the opposition's calculations, would benefit Greater Serbian propagandists, and conversely, would be the worst option, consciously or unconsciously contributing to the further erosion of the civic character of the state, and fueling the narrative about radical Montenegrin nationalists.

Observing the opposition's actions in the past three years, the answer is not difficult to decipher – instead of taking responsibility, in the case of the aforementioned scenario, the opposition will resort to shifting from the role of victors and controllers to the role of victims of a political deception orchestrated by the current prime minister.

We witnessed an identical scenario when the Democratic Party of Socialists provided minority support to Dritan Abazović's government, boasting about the victory of the civic and pro-European opposition, which, by voting no confidence in Zdravko Krivokapić's government, managed to preserve national interests.

Just a few months later, the opposition, by suppressing civic resistance, gave Abazović a free hand to sign the so-called fundamental agreement with the Serbian Orthodox Church, and after the secret act carried out by Abazović and Patriarch Porfirije, for which there were indications for days, they initiated proceedings to vote no confidence in Abazović's government due to the damage caused, accusing him of betraying the trust of the Democratic Party of Socialists.

Objectively speaking, Abazović never hid that signing the fundamental agreement was one of his priorities, which in practice means that the part of the opposition that provided minority support to his government was not deceived.

Intoxicated by the desire to return to power, they enabled Abazović to sign an agreement that, in addition to handing over religious buildings and cultural-historical heritage, grants the Serbian Orthodox Church unconstitutional powers that position this religious community above the state. Opposition parties are paying the price for their own calculations, and the lack of a census strategy, which would have resulted in postponing the process until spring and securing mechanisms to prevent aggressive propaganda, could certainly lead to a new drop in support in future election cycles.

Continuation of disinformation propaganda and advocacy for constitutional redefinition of the state structure Radical propaganda, predominantly carried out by pro-regime media controlled by Aleksandar Vučić, as well as obscure portals like IN4s and Borba, which, despite not being registered in Montenegro, have been actively spreading Russian-Serbian propaganda for years, with clear elements of hate speech, has continued even after the official start of the census.

Spreading Disinformation

Not even the fact that elections in Serbia will be held in just ten days has stopped the missionaries of the Greater Serbian propaganda machine.

Analyses by the Digital Forensic Center indicate the daily dissemination of fake news, which, by falsifying data from previous censuses, revisionist distortion of historical facts, and deepening the narrative about the status of endangered Serbs in Montenegro, has been attempting to deny the existence of the Montenegrin nation and the Montenegrin language for months.

In recent days, issues of language and the use of the Cyrillic script have been particularly prominent, which, contrary to the tendentious reports of propaganda outlets, is in equal use with the Latin script, as guaranteed by the Constitution and confirmed in practice.

One of the most striking examples of arbitrary and unethical reporting is certainly the article by the Euronews portal, in which the journalist, without citing sources, claims that the Serbian language will be returned to official use and school curricula after the census, although Article 13 of the Montenegrin Constitution clearly defines the official use of the Serbian language, which has the same status as the languages used by members of minority nations.

Dangerous disinformation is a consequence of advocating for constitutional redefinition, initiated by the Speaker of Parliament Andrija Mandić with a recent statement to Večernje novosti, and continued by his comrades from the former Democratic Front.

In the aforementioned statement, Mandić stated that if the census results show that more than half of the citizens speak Serbian, he will initiate a dialogue on declaring Serbian the official language, thereby implying the initiation of a constitutional amendment.

Although this statement served as a signal to official Belgrade that everything is proceeding according to plan in Montenegro, Mandić's colleagues took this thesis very seriously, and yesterday we could read the announcement by the mayor of Nikšić, Marko Kovačević, about changing the state anthem.

The census desires of Vučić's servants do not seem to concern the government or the opposition too much.
All talk about census propaganda has suddenly been put on the back burner, under the pretext of de-escalating tensions.

The fact that the active participation of political actors in propaganda activities violates the provision of the census agreement prohibiting political parties from participating in census campaigns is completely ignored. Those who dare to point out the detrimental impact of propaganda and the inadequate conditions for conducting the census are automatically labeled, as Prime Minister Spajić put it, as rigid individuals.

The former group of extremists has thus become a group of rigid individuals, consisting of citizens, representatives of critically oriented media, and the civil sector – all critical voices for whom silence in the face of nationalistic propaganda outbursts and conducting the process contrary to professional recommendations is not characteristic.

Although the announcements about the constitutional redefinition of Montenegro are currently perceived as fictitious ramblings of representatives of the Russian-Serbian agency, one should not overlook the fact that their leader, a Chetnik duke, is at the head of the legislative branch of government, and in a year, according to the coalition agreement, ministerial and ambassadorial positions await them.

Also, we must not ignore the fact that almost all entities that now constitute the government structures received political appointments thanks to their loyalty to the Serbian Orthodox Church, so the number of hands that would support an initiative to change the Constitution in the Parliament is uncertain, despite the statutory principles of individual parties.

The fact that changing articles related to language, script, and state symbols would require a referendum confirmation in the form of support from at least three-fifths of citizens, after a two-thirds majority in Parliament, does not mean that the harmful intentions of those who want to turn Montenegro into a southern province of the Serbian world should not be problematized. The mere advocacy for constitutional changes is a prelude to reshaping the state character, through the tendency to declare national Serbs as a constituent people, and to transform Montenegro from a civic state into a state of peoples.

We pointed out the danger of public expression of such intentions and the initiation of initiatives that incite fear and insecurity not only among national Montenegrins but also among members of minority nations, by questioning their status clearly defined by the Constitution, even after the presidential elections, when the current president Jakov Milatović and Prime Minister Milojko Spajić
claimed that they would secure a two-thirds parliamentary majority after the parliamentary elections.

We wrote that it is reasonable to believe that the purpose of such announcements is not necessarily reforms leading to progress on the European path, but some other initiatives, which could be the result of a coalition partnership with the coalition For the Future of Montenegro. The Montenegrin opposition, unfortunately, has not learned anything from its own mistakes. Perhaps, instead of a firmly extended hand towards the former Democratic Front, it would be politically wiser to listen to the views of experts, the so-called rigid individuals, whom Milojko Spajić and Milan Knežević so readily defended the opposition members with whom they exchanged the harshest accusations not so long ago and rejected any form of cooperation.

However, times are changing, and only citizens suffer the consequences of calculating games. By treating citizens as obedient followers who are obliged to unquestioningly follow party decisions, the opposition has contributed to the creation of an unfavorable census environment.

The fact that the census in Montenegro is far from a statistical issue is confirmed by numerous photos of census forms published on social networks, as well as false estimates of census results that are part of a disinformation campaign in which social media users are active participants. As long as propaganda outlets and representatives of political parties bombard us with messages that represent open pressure on free declaration and legitimize propaganda campaigns with their silence, the census process cannot be considered legitimate.

Until we are convinced that Andrija Mandić's satisfaction with the agreement reached with the opposition will remain at the level of an unfulfilled dream, whose course and conclusion we already know, doubts about the regularity of the census will be justified.

A bitter taste remains due to the opposition's participation in reducing the census to a mere game of national counting, from whose results, whatever they may be, party soldiers will reap their own points, further undermining the goals of civic resistance and the fight for the preservation of the civic and secular state structure.