By: Vladimir Matijanic
Aleksandar Vučić, the President of the Republic of Serbia, revealed a few days ago on his favorite Pink Television that the BIA had been informing the Serbian leadership about the events in Montenegro all night, before the military-police enthronement of Joanikije Mićović in Cetinje.
BIA, if you are not familiar, is the Serbian SOA, a secret agency, and Joanikije's enthronement, if you are not familiar with it, was a military-police spectacle with helicopters, tear gas, rubber bullets and other testimonies of evangelical love by which the Montenegrin state deterred its citizens from intends to directly, in front of the Cetinje monastery, express their position on Joanikije's takeover of the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral.
Vučić did not answer what the Serbian secret police did in Montenegro
So, BIA. The spy world and the hemisphere – there is often no difference – are happy to do it somewhere, even in foreign countries, but it doesn't happen too often that the presidents of sovereign states publicly admit that their agents spend the night spying abroad, and it is a real pity that on the other hand there was no a more self-confident journalist to stop Vučić with a very simple and short – why?
If Serbia is a secular state, if there are certain differences between it and the Serbian Orthodox Church, then the enthronement of prominent church figures should not be a job that mobilizes state resources and sends them to other countries for intelligence. If, on the other hand, Serbia is a church state or if the Serbian Orthodox Church is its spiritual crutch, then Joanikije's enthronement is an incoherent military-police operation – to use the corresponding Croatian terminology.
Vučić's answer to the naive “why?” it would be all the more interesting that the current Montenegrin government is pro-Serbian in terms of personnel and content. The ruling coalition was formed at the instigation of the Serbian Orthodox Church, outraged by the intention of the eternal party of Montenegrin ruler Milo Djukanovic to pass a law that confronted its property claims. The measure of church involvement in the composition of the current Montenegrin government is evidenced by the fact that the late Metropolitan Amfilohije, a war instigator and Joanikije's predecessor, personally engaged in encouraging negotiations among the members of the current ruling coalition in September last year.
The BIA, therefore, did not go to a territory where Serbs were seriously endangered in any way, but to a state with elected pro-Serbian rule. Her action could be justified by some national interests.
Montenegro and Republika Srpska as satisfaction for Kosovo
There are no rational reasons.
But where it ends rationally, it begins nationally. To Vučić, and to the Serbian Orthodox Church, Montenegro and the Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina come as a kind of satisfaction for Kosovo lost in the era of Slobodan Milošević. Beyond the illusion of Kosovo as a “vow of Serbia”, as formulated by Patriarch Porfirije, the first man of the Serbian Orthodox Church, there remains a very cold and rational fact that it is another country, a NATO base, but also that there is not enough cannon fodder ready in Serbia to leave earthly life in order to raise a national flag near Prizren.
However, Republika Srpska in unstable Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the neurotic Milorad Dodik, and Montenegro with the church coalition are comforting booty to the extent that international circumstances allow. Formal accession is not possible at the moment, Montenegro is also a member of NATO, but we should not expect too much from the so-called international factors.
There is a handy detail to illustrate what we are claiming. Porfirije, an ardent verbal fighter for Kosovo, also planned to be enthroned in Peja in May, “in the ancient seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church”, but gave up due to epidemiological measures “in the southern Serbian province”, Serbian media reported. There was no giving up in Montenegro, where the government was ready to use rubber bullets and tear gas to drive out the gathered opponents of Joanikije‘s enthronement.
From all of the above, there is a similarity between Vučić and Milošević. Vučić is even closer to the SOC than Milošević at the beginning of his ruling career – the SOC was later irritated by Milošević's readiness to sign some peace agreements, but that is almost irrelevant today.
The current president of Serbia found a soul mate in Porfirije, they are allegedly connected by family, but also spiritually: The ruler, it is said, even at the time when he was a runner-up of war criminal Vojislav Seselj in the Serbian Radical Party, went to Porfirije to treat his soul with confession.
Porfirije is Vučić's intimacy
Porfirije, it seems, is not a man inclined to choose parties, he once became a member at the suggestion of the Democratic Party, and later the president of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media. The arrival of Vučić's government also survived in that place, he left only when he became the Metropolitan of Zagreb and Ljubljana, sometime in May 2014. He took over the leadership of the Serbian Orthodox Church in February this year, after his predecessor Irinej moved in with his employer from the consequences of Covid-19.
Just as Serbian rallies in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were not conceivable without Milosevic's direction, so the Cetinje spectacle was not possible without Vucic. At the same time, he tirelessly manipulates, takes on the role of a victim. The late Srdja Popovic, one of the smartest and most honorable Serbian heads in recent history, once noticed that Milosevic actually expelled Slovenia from Yugoslavia, using the so-called double speech, that is, accusing it of separatism. That is what Vučić does, only in changed circumstances.
Therefore, his secret policemen were in Montenegro, and the presence of the army is mentioned. Sarajevo lawyer and journalist Senad Pecanin warned that there was a notice on the official website of the Republika Srpska Ministry of the Interior that their members were also in Cetinje. Nevertheless, Vučić noticed the problem among Montenegrins: “They wanted to separate the metropolis from the mother of the Serbian Orthodox Church and first proclaim it the Orthodox Church in Montenegro, and not immediately the Montenegrin one, which would be for Montenegrins and Serbs as well. They wanted the Serbs to assimilate over time and for a clear two-thirds majority of the Montenegrin Orthodox people to emerge. It was a political plan that they tried to push through, and then I blamed them. Serbia is to blame for them because we recognized their plan and their idea and started talking about it publicly,” the Serbian president said on Pink. Evidence? What do you want, do you doubt Him?
Vučić says that his state will not be humiliated by the state that is humiliating it
The Serbian president then added a few drops of classic self-pity: “Imagine that it happened in our country and that I led it, so I would be hanged. It would not be hung by our people, but by Brussels, Washington… Because everything is allowed against Serbia… Hence the campaign against the Serbian Orthodox Church, which was even joined by Bakir Izetbegović, who I thought understood Sharia law, but I did not know he also understands Orthodoxy.”
In the end, Vučić decisively said: “Attacks on Serbia have always come from Montenegro. Even during the NATO aggression on our country, Montenegro was used as a political training ground for an attack on Serbia, and it happened every time. And they are used to governing Serbia, not only the narcotics market and the killings in Belgrade, they are used to governing Serbia. I am telling you now – we will not govern Montenegro, we want fraternal relations with Montenegro. But I guarantee you, while I am alive, I will not let you conquer Serbia the way you have conquered it for almost 30 years! As long as I'm alive, and you know what that means and what you need to do.”
Vucic, just like Milosevic, occasionally seems completely detached from reality
It would probably be too much to ask him how Montenegro, with fewer inhabitants than Zagreb, many of whom identify as Serbs, has conquered a state that has started wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. How did it do it tactically and logically? The only meaningful explanation is inconsistency – Vucic, like Milosevic, occasionally seems detached from reality in public appearances.
Somewhere at the beginning of the Yugoslav wars, on Milosevic's orders, guys like Franko Simatovic, the current Hague convict, arrived in the Knin area from Belgrade. Officially, their mission was intelligence, and in essence it was reduced to preparing Serbs for war. Simatovic worked for the then State Security Department, the predecessor of Vucic's BIA. Thirty years later, Milosevic is lying in the yard of the family house in Pozarevac, Simatovic is sitting in the Hague, and the BIA, on Vučić's order, is operating in Montenegro. Officially, they deal with intelligence.
Vucic, like Milosevic, is calling for the protection of Serbs
Everything that Milosevic did, but did not do anything good, was formally inspired by the protection of Serbs. Vučić is also following this pattern – just as Plenković and Milanović imitate Tuđman in their attitude towards BiH, it seems that Serbia and Croatia are led by ghosts of criminals – with him adding a little personal suffering and readiness to suffer. Here, he tells the Montenegrins that they will not humiliate his country through him alive, after he unloaded his spies, maybe even soldiers, in their country, and even admitted it. Stupid, isn't it? But it works.
A little over a year ago, the weekly Vreme compared Vučić and Milošević. Their text was based on domestic political similarities: in 1997, for example, Milosevic announced “twice the growth rate of the highest growth rates in Europe” and spoke of the negative pressures of external factors. Last year, Vučić boasted of the highest economic growth in Europe, Milošević announced high-speed railways, and Vučić promised that the train from Belgrade to Niš would be reached in an hour and 20 minutes. They are also connected by the attitude towards the media, the opposition, only that Milosevic rarely appeared in the media.
There are some differences in the finesse. Milosevic's policy nominally defended Yugoslavia, and in fact it tried to shape the new Serbian borders, Vučić, on the other hand, deals with the “Serbian world”, with a flat surface laid on four points, the existence of which is especially gladly witnessed by Aleksandar Vulin, Vučić's Minister for raising tensions in neighboring countries.
National party in Belgrade with Vučić, Dodik and Porfirije
They finally have a similar attitude towards freedoms. From this school year, the singing of the national anthem is obligatory in Serbian schools. A teacher from Sandzak, a Bosniak-majority part of Serbia, who refused was detained by police. And on September 15, the Serbian Assembly should pass the Law on the Protection of the Cyrillic alphabet. It has not been determined who is endangering it, until the moment of publishing this text, but that is one of the superfluous issues anyway. By the will of the Ruler, the same September 15 will be declared the Day of Serbian Unity.
– The main goal in trying to establish this holiday is to motivate all our citizens, wherever they live, Serbs from all over, to point out our tricolor, the flag that is one of the symbols of Serbs, where they live, on the house or building, where whatever they live – said Nikola Selaković, Minister of Foreign Affairs. A celebration is also planned in Belgrade, next to the monument to Stefan Nemanja, and Vučić, Dodik and Porfirije will address the gathered.
Serbian president in the company of destabilizers of BiH and Montenegro. We can be sure of one thing: he will not rebuke them. No reason, they're on the same line.