Perhaps the laws of politics have the certainty of the laws of physics when it pertains to the kingmaker of a government majority.
Abazović and his “URA” party were the kingmakers in the government formed after the general elections of August 2020. They enabled a change of power after more than two decades and of the ruling party after seven decades. No small feat per se!
However, the coalition was a motley crew with its most prominent member a pro-Russian, pro-Serbian (actually Serbian), anti-NATO, anti-independent Kosovo and not pro-EU. That limits an ambitious kingmaker: Abazović was appointed Deputy PM with responsibility for the security sector. Despite sometimes questionable legality, the exposure and severing of some old corrupt power networks was an achievement.
However, not many other government achievements to show, certainly gaffes and blunders galore. The incidents around the enthronement of a Serbian Church bishop in Cetinje, the old capital city, marked the end of this government. Rather unexpectedly and surprisingly, the next government would feature Abazović as PM and his arch-foe President Djukanović’s party as the main coalition force.
In the best case, this new government would stabilize the choppy political situation and prepare for recent elections, including consensual electoral reform and voters lists revision. Ideally would undertake fundamental reforms required by the EU accession process.
Abazović did neither. He chose instead to poke in the eye of his government’s most prominent bearer: the president’s party.
First by declaring his intention to join the Open Balkans initiative.
Second, by signing a sell-out agreement with the Serbian Orthodox Church.
All previous Montenegro governments rightly rejected the Open Balkans (including the one Abazović served as DPM in) and the president as a superfluous duplicate of the Berlin Process’ Common Regional Market. Many saw it as a Serbian tool for achieving regional hegemony.
As Open Balkans has been used to isolate Kosovo for Abazović, an ethnic Albanian apart from. A self-declared pro-European, it should have been a double anathema (admittedly, he run on a civil, non-ethnic platform).
Djukanović’s party lost the 2020 election over an attempt to bolster the historic Montenegro Orthodox Church. Which was merged into the
Serbian Orthodox Church in 1918, as the until then independent Montenegro was merged into the future Kingdom of Yugoslavia. A legal attempt in 2019 to restitute property to the Montenegrin Autocephalous Orthodox Church galvanized the pro-Serbian opposition, increased their parliamentary seats and eventually made the government majority.
A national church in the Balkans has usually been central to forming national identity during the last centuries of Ottoman rule and the first decades of independence. It remains an essential reference.
It also can go overboard in ethnophiletism and advocate for killing the “others”. So the Serbian church during the Yugoslav secession wars, same with the Russian one currently. In this perspective, Djukanović’s strives become understandable.
The agreement PM Abazović signed with the head of the Serbian church gives the latter not just the disputed property, an eminent position in the country but also the confirmation of her historical primordial pretence. It would be difficult to imagine a more brutal public insult to the president and most coalition parties.
And for a civic leader, let alone an ethnic Albanian, it would be again anathema to grant such concessions to the Serbian church.
Both attempts make Abazović some sort of Nixon. Only without the purpose and strategic foresight of that US President.
A final note about a government kingmaker and a junior coalition partner: you can veto things the senior partner wants to push through. Sometimes by voting against or, more dramatically, by threatening government collapse. But also, you cannot force your policy upon your more significant partner. This is as certain as gravity and other laws of physics. And if it still matters, it isn’t democratic!
Genc Pollo, Former Minister and Member of Parliament
Tirana, 21 August 2022
