Podgorica: Smirivanje trusne scene
Montenegro Post-referendum: Faraway Consensus

Summary/Abstract: At the time of the ‘celebration’ staged on St. Vitus’ Day in the year of 1989 to mark the 600th anniversary of Prince Lazar’s passing from earthly to heavenly kingdom, when a certain Montenegrin (by origin), playing with history and politics, opened Pandora’s box of the Balkans, hardly anyone among the rallied would wager that Montenegro, largely swept by an identical heavenly euphoria and mythomania, would one fine day in May turn out for a referendum and leave Serbia, caught unawares, the legacy of a common state’s legal status and then set out on a road of its own. Somewhat symbolically indeed, the last “i” was dotted on another St. Vitus’ day when the flag of Montenegro was hoisted on East River, in front of the UN New York seat. Now that calls for infinite lament and a new bard to mourn history and its cycles where misfortunes befall Serbs on June 28 – Kosovo of yore, Milosevic’s extradition to the Hague of late. Harder and harder it gets, ending with Montenegrin membership of the UN, which, as the radicals would put it, temporarily removed it from Serbia’s historical borders. It was on May 21, that the eternal dreams of expanded Serbia’s borders in a union that was anything but, were dispelled: Under the vigilant eye of the domestic and international public, controlled conditions and special rules established through the EU mediation, the citizens of Montenegro decided the fate of their state.

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