Za "Time" from Podgorica
There has been intense speculation about the withdrawal of Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Đukanović from the position he has held for more than 25 years since January of this year, when he barely survived the vote of confidence in the government and managed to consolidate his own party.
The decision to nominate Duško Marković, the current Deputy Prime Minister of the Government, for the mandate after the elections held on October 16, was hardly a surprise in Podgorica, bearing in mind that Đukanović's "bench" in the Democratic Party of Socialists is getting thinner with names that even the voters of that party would could swallow as a formal prime minister.
In the last few years, especially after long-time Đukanović's allies withdrew under the burden of criminal proceedings for corruption and organized crime, and under pressure from the party, Marković was considered the boss's right-hand man.
In March of this year, Đukanović hinted at a possible withdrawal, saying that he had fulfilled his plans and expectations in politics. On that occasion, he said: "I believe that it is time in Montenegro to think about new generations who will write new pages of Montenegrin democratic and economic development."
However, as then and today, no one in Montenegro believes that he has left politics and that the situation on the political scene will change significantly.
PRESIDENTIAL SPECULATIONS: Marković is the candidate of the ruling DPS for the mandate for the composition of the new government if he manages to reach an agreement with the Albanian, Croat and Bosniak parties. Bearing in mind the history of those political relations and the fact that the minority parties, as a rule, were with Đukanović whenever he missed a mandate or two for the parliamentary majority, no major surprises are expected in the negotiations for new support.
Đukanović remains at the head of the party he has led since 1997, when in a trench battle he managed to oust Momir Bulatović, the then president of Montenegro, playing the card of breaking away from the regime of Slobodan Milošević.
Analysts in Podgorica believe that Đukanović is already preparing the ground to be a candidate for the president of the country in the elections planned for the spring of 2018. The mandate of Filip Vujanović, three-time president of the country, expires in a little more than a year, and if Đukanović really set his sights on that position, it is not unrealistic to expect it to be sooner.
It remains unclear, however, whether the decision to withdraw from the prime minister's position was a previously well-planned tactical action or whether it was instigated and accelerated by the events leading up to and on election day, when Djukanović's life was allegedly hanging in the balance due to a "coup d'état".
The third scenario mentioned by connoisseurs of the situation in Podgorica is that due to numerous controversies that have surrounded him for years, especially regarding alleged ties to organized crime, Đukanović was "asked" by influential circles in the West to step down from state office. There was allegedly no mention of his other businesses.
Admittedly, the issue of immunity remains, which is often the explanation for Djukanović's frantic efforts to ensure at all costs that he remains in state office in recent years.
The indictment in Italy for cigarette smuggling in the early 2017s has been archived, not abolished, so the opposition hopes that this issue could be on the agenda again now that Đukanović does not have a formal state position. The chances of that are small, however, when Brussels and Washington openly celebrate Đukanović as a "guarantor of pro-Western Montenegro" and personally responsible for the fact that Montenegro allegedly broke away from Moscow's influence and expects formalization of NATO membership by mid-XNUMX.
THE BLACK BOX OF MONTENEGRO POLITICS: In order to silence some voices in his own party, Đukanović said that he personally proposed Marković, "convinced of his professional and human qualities", and that he "will personally, through full political engagement at the head of the DPS, provide strong support to Marković and the future government".
Although their political and personal opponents claim that he was brought into the party "just to be a deputy", Duško Marković will certainly not be just an extra. At least much less than his two predecessors, Igor Lukšić and Željko Šturanović, who briefly succeeded Đukanović when he decided to step down from the post of prime minister in 2008 and again in 2010.
For more than fifteen years, Marković has been part of the innermost circle of a few people really close to Đukanović, first as the head of the secret service, and then as the deputy prime minister in charge of the political system and internal and foreign policy.
In the early nineties, the future Montenegrin representative was a deputy and general secretary of the government, and from 1998 to 2010 he led the State Security Service, which was renamed the National Security Agency (ANB) in 2005. After that, he was briefly the Minister of Justice in the government of Igor Lukšić, mainly responsible for the rather painful judicial reform that Montenegro had to implement as a candidate for EU membership.
Critics of the regime have not forgotten Marković's work in the secret service, they call him the "black box" of the Montenegrin political scene. During his tenure, the secret service was constantly accused of being under strong political influence, of having in its ranks people suspected of the most serious crimes, including murder and extortion, and of eavesdropping on Djukanović's opponents and journalists.
Although he avoided public appearances in the early stages of running the office, as early as 2004 he found himself in the middle of a scandal with an alleged attempt to kill one of the then opposition leaders.
The leader of the Liberal Party at the time, Miodrag Živkovic, claimed that the service organized his assassination, but the daily newspaper "Publika" quoted Markovic as allegedly saying: "If the service had tried to kill him, he would not have survived."
After strong reactions in the public, Marković denied that he said that and sued the newspaper for defamation.
His name was also mentioned in connection with the affair of wiretapping foreign diplomats in Montenegro.
In December 2011, local media announced, based on information from several diplomatic sources, that the partner countries requested the dismissal of the then director of the National Security Agency, Vladan Joković, due to wiretapping of their diplomats.
According to those sources, the wiretapping allegedly started in 2010, while Marković was at the head of the service.
ACCUSATIONS AND DENIALS: Marković was also linked to cigarette smuggling. He is accused of being the leader of one of the two conflicting clans in Montenegro, Mojkovački after the town where he was born and grew up, which for years have been making millions of profits in the production and distribution of illegal cigarettes.
Speculations were fueled by the former head of the criminal police, Predrag Šuković, who revealed in mid-2015 that his team was investigating Marković and former police chief Veselin Veljović, both from Mojkovac, as leaders of a criminal group.
Marković categorically denied all that, stating that it was about "ordered political claims".
Passions flared up again a few months later when the police officer Šuković was suspected and then convicted, after it was discovered that under the nickname "Boss" he had written the comment "he'd better take care of his health" on a local portal under the news that Marković laid a wreath at the partisan monument in Podgorica.
Marković, as well as the court, assessed those words as a threat, and Šuković was shot a few months later in Podgorica. Although the media linked the case to an earlier conflict with Marković, he denied it.
Now, as the future prime minister, Duško Marković says that he has a difficult task ahead of him, that "we have to work harder, more expertly and more responsibly", and that they must allow "the mistakes that happened to us to be repeated".
While the Montenegrin ruling elites are preparing for a new government, which they say could be formed by the end of November, at the same time announcing an investigation against "groups from Russia and Serbia" for alleged involvement in the coup attempt, it seems that the prosecution's evidence against groups of Serbian citizens arrested for allegedly planning a terrorist attack on election day on October 16.
Dnevnik "Dan" announced on October 30 that the Montenegrin Special Prosecutor's Office had already dropped charges of terrorism against eleven suspects from a group of twenty Serbian citizens arrested on suspicion of planning to break into the building of the Parliament of Montenegro and capture Đukanović on election night.
Previously, the day after the election, six people were released because there were no grounds for further detention.
Since the spectacular action of the police and the special prosecutor's office, which, as they claim, prevented "bloodshed", only the former commander of the Serbian Gendarmerie Bratislav Dikić, Kristina Hristić and Aleksandar Sinđelić, who the prosecutor's office claims is on the run, are suspected of attempted terrorism.
The others are now only charged with "creating a criminal organization."
