Bulatovic, The End of a Career

The Montenegrin president is no longer the shining star he was on March 25 when he voiced the figures that brought him victory at a vote during a DPS main board session. He said then that if his stands don’t win the support of the main board he would resign and leave it up to Milo Djukanovic to decide what to do. Since then the main board voted only once in Bulatovic’s presence, the day when 56 of the 100 members voted to support Slobodan Milosevic’s candidacy for FRY president.

Bulatovic thought 56 main board members supported him but events proved him wrong. Since then an operation was launched to break up the main board along with calls for a congress as his last hope of political salvation; a congress that he and his followers would organize.

A congress has been called and a board to organize it was formed. Now that Bulatovic is no longer DPS leader, or the party’s presidential candidate, if he decides to form a new party his closest associates might turn away.

The results of a poll conducted during last November’s elections show that Djukanovic is much more popular than Bulatovic. That was evident at DPS election conventions where support for the prime minister was much louder than for the president.

The impression now is that Momir Bulatovic is lost in a battle to secure support for Milosevic and that he doesn’t realize that he as elected thanks to the votes of MPs who are mainly loyal to the new party leader.

he couldn’t forgive Marovic, Djukanovic and Pejanovic Djurisic for being opposed to that support. The outcome of the federal parliament session knocked those arguments out of his hands. He insisted on that at a meeting of the Podgorica DPS board last weekend. He spoke about how the party’s executive board had urged MPs to provide guarantees that they will vote for Milosevic in federal parliament and then spoke bitterly of an opposition resolution demanding the rejection of SPS stands. He concluded that the state was in danger. It seems the hardest thing for him to do was to face the fact that he will have a rival at the Montenegrin presidential elections which his associates said he saw as the culmination of a plot to remove him from politics.

Bulatovic must be aware that the decisions adopted by a majority of main board members can’t be changed no matter how hard he tries to convince his supporters otherwise. Threats of a breakup of the MP group and chaos in Montenegro aren’t original but the question is whether they can be realized, especially since there isn’t a single state institution in the republic that Bulatovic hasn’t gotten into an argument with or made fierce accusations against. He’s fallen out of media favor and he must have been shocked by the loss of TV support and the change of the editorial team in the state controlled station. His attempt to retaliate by removing the editor-in-chief of the state controlled Pobjeda daily was just in a series of disappointments which would make any ration person give up. He still hopes that a referendum within the party might fix things but he doesn’t realize that a referendum or party congress don’t mean a thing unless they’ve been approved by the main board. He’s turned the DPS over to Milica Pejanovic Djurisic which has been officially confirmed.

The Podgorica and Pljevlja party boards that were disbanded have been replaced by coordinating boards as the only legitimate DPS forum in those municipalities. It’s not important whether the same thing will happen in all seven of the municipalities where the local DPS boards demanded a congress nor is it important how many members those disbanded boards can rally since they’re no longer legal.

The new party leadership won’t use the mechanism of expulsions because they said minority opinions are desirable in the party but can’t endanger the will of the majority. Whoever leaves gets nothing because the spoils go to whoever holds the party seals and that can’t be changed now.

The congress Bulatovic called can only be the congress of some new party and it’s clear that it won’t be held in DPS buildings. That congress can nominate Bulatovic as its presidential candidate in a repeat of the last elections when he faced the disobedient Branko Kostic.

Given the new situation its hard to believe that Djukanovic will enter into a race with Bulatovic to prove which of them is Milosevic’s friend as they did during the last presidential elections because polls show that Montenegrins can’t be won over by praising Milosevic. It’s possible that Milosevic will simply write off Bulatovic and his followers as an rational politician would do.