Poll: Montenegro quits Serbia…Crowds celebrate in capital as unofficial results show breakup
PODGORICA, Serbia-Montenegro (CNN) — Montenegro has decided to sever its union with Serbia, a move that would break up the last two pieces of the former Yugoslavia, according to unofficial poll results released Sunday. The unofficial results found that 55.3 percent of voters opted for the change, Journalist Bruce Konviser said. That’s slightly more than the 55 percent approval that the European Union said was required for passage.
It was just a matter of time, I suppose, before Tito’s dream took its last dying breath and collapsed- penniless, frayed, and completely, utterly morally bankrupt. I’ve been watching the various parts of the former Yugoslavia very closely since my time there in the mid-90s, and Montenegro’s independence vote simply proved my theory- that it was a matter of if, not when, this artificial construct of a country convulsed for the last time. Now all that is left of Communist Yugoslavia is Serbia, and even they are about to lose Kosovo- again, not a matter of if, merely when.
The Serb power structure that for so long controlled Yugoslavia and then what was left of it are finally reaping their rewards. After years of repression, genocide, and wholesale destruction, it’s isolation within the international community is almost complete. That they continue to hinder war criminals like Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic only serves to emphasize just how little they “get it”, and how unlikely it is that they ever will.
Can you blame Montenegrins for wanting to rid themselves of the dead weight that has become Serbia? Sure, they will have a country roughly the size and population of South Dakota, but at least they’ll be in charge of their own fate and out from under the corrupt, iron hand of Serbia. Ultimately, that can only be a good thing.
“I’m sure that tonight a democratic Montenegro will be celebrated,” Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic said.
Although official results are not expected until Monday, people began celebrating inside government buildings Sunday night, and fireworks illuminated the center of the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica.
At stake is whether Europe will see the formation of a new country. Montenegro would be a small, mountainous nation along the Adriatic Sea with a total population of about 650,000.
Montenegro had been one of six republics within Yugoslavia before the country’s violent unraveling in 1991.
Once an independent kingdom, Montenegro was erased from the map after World War I and merged into the newly formed Yugoslavia. Many Montenegrins resisted, and a seven-year guerrilla war followed. After World War II, the six-republic Yugoslavia became communist.
During the federation’s breakup in the 1990s, Montenegro’s leaders sided with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic — who would later stand trial for war crimes — in his war campaigns in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia.
In 2003, after nearly a decade of war and political upheaval, Serbia and Montenegro replaced what remained of the Yugoslav federation with a loose union.
A country that was for so long held together by fear, oppression, and force of arms is now almost finally, completely finished with it’s prolonged death throes. It’s just too bad that it took so many years and so many thousands of innocent lives for it to happen- and still no one has been called to account for it….
