Change of Power in Voivodina

Restitution of Both Funds and Autonomy?

AIM Belgrade, October 29, 2000

Just six months earlier - as, for example, on the 1st of March when, because of the visit of the then Republican Prime Minister Mirko Marjanovic to Novi Sad, 44 members of the League of Social Democrats of Voivodina (LSDV) and around twenty other citizens of Novi Sad were, preventively, arrested – the news that the president of the provincial Assembly of Voivodina Nenad Canak and the head of the Republic Ministry of the Interior (MUP) for the district of Southern Backa Marinko Kresoja had examined the overall safety situation and expressed their "mutual content with the fact that the democratic changes in Voivodina were carried out without significant disturbances of the public law and order" would have sounded like Orson Wells' radio-coverage of the Martian invasion or, at least, a clever publicity stunt. Six months later, the meeting and the issued protocolar statement are a fact of reality.

In fact, citizens of Voivodina seem to have understood quite literally the recent autumn elections as plebiscitary: they have wiped all other parties but the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) off the political scene of the Province, entrusting it with 118 out of the possible 120 seats in the Province Assembly. At the moment, the entire opposition is made up of two physicians from the municipality of Odzaci (Dr. Djordje Bogdanovic and Dr. Ljubomir Milenkovic), the solitary two that are now responsible for the realization of the political ideas of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and the Yugoslav Left (JUL), whatever that is supposed to mean. The unification brought about by the guiding idea that runs: "Down with Milosevic!", including all possible interpretations stemming from the negative overtones of the symbolic meanings the former president's "name, figure and deeds" have assumed in past years, as well as the (SPS) election slogan "Hold your nose and vote for DOS" - even in cases where the suggestion was taken almost literally - have resulted in an entirely novel arrangement of political forces in Voivodina and brought to power political stands up to yesterday viewed as unacceptable.

Everything they did or failed to do backfired on the Socialists who were in power too long - and, at the same time, on Seselj's Radicals (SRS) and Draskovic's Serb Renewal Movement (SPO) who were simultaneously blown off the political scene of the province, stripped of power even on the local level. The fact that they rarely even mentioned the province by name, the forced propaganda they engaged in, the fact that they consulted Belgrade for each stand they took, their failure to take note of the recent floods and draught that have devastated Voivodina's agriculture and, finally - despite numerous sugar and three oil refineries - the shortage of sugar and cooking oil in the province. Nothing could help them this time. Least of all the new election law devised to scatter the votes of the opposition due to the three candidates in the runoff of the general elections for the first time held in accordance with the "majority vote" principle. Every single of these misdeeds backfired. Let's say that the boomerang thrown in 1988 - at the time of the "yoghurt revolution" (which had brought Milosevic to power) - took a somewhat longer-lasting back-route...

Until the next deck of cards is dealt, Voivodina will be ruled by an Assembly presided by Nenad Canak, the leader of the LSDV and he will, undoubtedly, turn out to be the very opposite of all previous chairmen of the Province Assembly - a mere "ornament" deprived of all authority during the past 12 years (since 1988) - who tried hard to mention Voivodina as seldom as possible, strip it of even of symbolic revenues of its own and did their best not to take on themselves the responsibility for any, not even the slightest, undertaking in the province. It is not likely that Canak, whose political program rests upon the idea of the decentralization of Serbia (up to the concept of its federalization) will ever content himself with presiding over the Province Assembly if it is to represent a mere ornament or a means of the transmission of power.

The announcement that one of the first steps of the new authorities will be the restitution of founding and ownership rights to Television Novi Sad over to Voivodina - implying not only the request that RTS reinstate the power of appointment of the management of TV Novi Sad to the provincial assembly, but a subsidiary account of the transfer account onto which the money for the provincial television might flow as well - points to the contrary: to the fact that, coming from the highest place, all unsettled questions concerning ownership rights, not few in this case, will be opened, loud and clear. In his first interview to "Dnevnik", the sole daily in Serbian in the province, in the ten years of his engagement on the political scene of the province, Canak made it known that Voivodina would set up its own funds, but only after, in cooperation with the Parliament of Serbia, it revokes legal provisions preventing if from doing so at the moment: "According to the current Constitution of Serbia, Voivodina may set up funds in the fields of health services, social welfare and education, the chief obstacle to the achievement of this goal being the 96 laws imposed as a means to additionally reduce the autonomy of the province."

The quoted statement suggests that the president of the Province Assembly will, to begin with, try to win back the authority granted to the province by the now valid statute and postpone the issue of "legislative, executive and judicial rule in Voivodina which must be entitled to a Constitution of its own" until a later date. As long as the key political topic revolves around the subject of redirecting the money back into the treasury of the province, Canak will not meet with any opposition worth mentioning. It is hardly likely that even by far the most "Serbian" of the Serb parties that opt for centralism, now a part of DOS, would dare risk telling the voters in Voivodina that their money, once again, is to be spent by someone other than themselves, whoever that might be and however convincing his reasons might seem. This does not go to say that the Assembly of Voivodina will be spared of political views "allergic" to the very mentioning of the idea of an autonomous Voivodina, not to mention those advocating a republic. Although it has been repeatedly said that the "differences in the governing principles" of the parties now constituting DOS are not on the agenda at the moment, not one member of DOS, the "coalition born out of necessity", has omitted noting the fact that LSDV envisages a thorough decentralization of power and funds in the Republic and that it perceives Voivodina as one of the prospective European regions, i.e. as a republic, one of the five federal units of a decentralized Serbia. The said differences are not irrelevant in view of the present political circumstances in Voivodina and it is to be expected that the first discordant notes will be heard in connection with the adverse concepts of the constitutional set-up of the nation and the nominal guardian of the provincial revenues.

Notwithstanding the fact that, at one point of the first session of the latest gathering of the Province Assembly (after having heard the statement "elected by an unanimous vote" repeated a number of times) Nenad Canak, jocularly, asked: "Anyone from the opposition present?" He was, in fact, finally elected with 20 abstained votes, after a week-long public debate initiated by some of the DOS parties calling for a demonstration of the basic principle of democracy, the right to a choice, by means of offering two candidates for the presidential seat in Voivodina's assembly. The subsequent display of a democratic attitude, demonstrated after the pre- electoral arrangements and months of painstaking bargaining concerning the number of candidates on the ballot lists which, in fact, led to the bestowal of assembly seats in advance, could barely disguise the distrust towards him. In the end, the notion that the unity of DOS must not be put to a test prevailed.

So, although it was the last to vote in the runoff of general elections (October 8) - two days after the "excavator-incidents" in Belgrade on October 5th - Voivodina was the first to constitute its assembly and government. The bulky cabinet ( 21 ministers and six co-chairmen) is, undoubtedly, the result of the desire of individual DOS parties to get hold of "a piece of the power-cake" for themselves, while the Prime Minister Djordje Djukic, a member of Djindjic's Democratic Party (DS), a virtually anonymous head of an, in terms of its economic importance, rather unimportant municipality of Zabalj, represents a compromise solution and is the result of the unwillingness of the majority to concede the post to Miodrag Kostic, a member of DS as well, considered to be too close to Canak.

Thus, the power - at one point transferred to the central city square of Novi Sad marked by the monument of Svetozar Miletic which, following July 2nd of last year (and, particularly, the 21st of September), has served as a stage for an alternative "open parliament of the people", assembling according to need during the days and nights of the crisis provoked by the recent electoral theft, a meeting place of ten odd thousands of citizens of Novi Sad - has now been drawn back to the so called "institutions of the system"; in the meantime, the composer-singer Djordje Balasevic who has cheered the citizens of Novi Sad during the crisis by organizing two concerts in the open for their benefit, has left for the United Nations in the capacity of an UNHCR goodwill ambassador; the bridge over the Danube, meant to be inaugurated by Slobodan Milosevic prior to the second round of elections, has been put to use by the new mayor of Novi Sad, Borislav Novakovic (DS) and the men who have built it, the workers of "Mostogradnja" in an informal happening entitled "Is Novi Sad oppositionaly minded?" , directed by Nenad Canak and performed in front of an audience of approximately sixty thousand spectators... Members of the resistance movement "Otpor", until they too are drawn into the "system", warn here too : "WE ARE WATCHING YOU!"

Milena Putnik

(AIM)