New Minister of Police

Obliging Promises

The moves announced by the new minister of internal affairs Dusan Mihajlovic seem to be very encouraging. Constant reminding of the given promises and insisting on the achieved results are not at all unnecessary - on the contrary

AIM Belgrade, January 23, 2001

If one should judge by the announcements of Dusan Mihajlovic, leader of New Democracy (ND) and candidate for the deputy prime minister of Serbia in charge of the department of internal affairs, a big purge and profound re-organisation of the police will follow. The future minister promises the citizens uncompromising investigations, which will put an end to, organised crime, in other words that will end the practice of "a cigarette or arm smuggler being a respected member of the society, and an opposition leader or university professor an enemy". And that is not all: Mihajlovic announces that Slobodan Milosevic will be under constant public supervision until the judiciary reaches a decision; and when it does - the arrest and trial either in Belgrade or in The Hague, depending on "national and state strategy".

These ambitious statements do not belong to a young and inexperienced politician who longs for public promotion and popularity at any cost. Mihajlovic has been on the political scene during the entire Mihajlovic's era – first in power, then in the opposition, and after October 5, in power again. He is also not a person who knows the police indirectly, through traffic policemen, newspaper articles, books or stories told by "serious men"; he has spent five years in the service as an operative and probably that is where he got his nickname Dule CIA. To make things even more interesting, his candidacy for minister of the interior after a month-long haggling within DOS, all sorts of self-nominations and intrigues, turned out to be the generally acceptable solution. What is behind it?

"Instead of being a service of the citizens (...) the police became a private party or, if you wish, a family army. Having stepped out of the Constitutional framework, having put itself above all laws, the police became a paramilitary of JUL (Yugoslav United Left) and the red-and-black coalition", Mihajlovic said for NIN weekly. That this is true will nowadays be testified by majority of the citizens of Serbia, and that is what it was like last time when the leader of New Democracy was in power. But Mihajlovic's advantage is that like hardly anybody in the DOS he knows the mechanisms of operation of the former Praetorian Guards, its strong and its weak points, the relations within it and the connections with the economic and political elite without which it would have never turned into what it is now. Aware of who he is dealing with and what risks are threatening, the future minister of police has a big motive not to stop halfway: the former regime did not forgive those who turned their backs to it at one moment, and nobody in their right mind wishes to get into a similar situation again whoever the other party may be. For clarifying the relations in the police Mihajlovic was the choice that simply imposed himself: he is sufficiently experienced to find his place between two most significant figures in the DOS - the future prime minister of Serbia Zoran Djindjic and the President of FR Yugoslavia, Vojislav Kostunica - he is sufficiently qualified for the job that awaits him and he is sufficiently ambitious to know that public announcements oblige him and that his political future depends on the fulfillment of promises and manifested capabilities. In this he is somewhat similar to Nebojsa Covic, President of Democratic Alternative and also the future deputy prime minister of Serbia, former high official of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and former Socialist mayor of Belgrade who manifested maximum efficiency in dismantling the pillars of power of his former party.

Mihalj Kertes, former director of the Federal Customs Administration, in an interview mocked the former opposition leaders that they feared liquidation by saying that true danger threatened inside Milosevic's regime. Mihajlovic announced that murderers would be revealed as well as those who issued orders for a whole series of unclarified murders which shook Serbia in the past decade. Having stated that professionals in the Ministry of the interior (MUP) "were capable and willing, but had no courage", the future minister seems to corroborate what many policemen have spoken about unofficially - and this is that roots of these liquidations were inside the elite of the former regime. This promise should not be taken lightly. On the one hand is the public which justly expects professional murderers to be stopped, and on the other there is the question of credibility of the new authorities and its need for self-protection. If the mechanism and the background of these crimes are not disclosed, there will be no security in Serbia: danger will threaten not only from the old unrevealed "centres of power", but also from parts of the future transition elite which will know that the rules of the game have not changed.

This is where the question of the state security department of the MUP of Serbia opens. Mihajlovic admits that it was engaged solely in offering protection to the former ruling couple and persecution of their political opponents. Awareness is also growing in public that some of its parts were at the same time the key links in organised crime. Such as it is nowadays, it is impossible to reform the state security service. Mihajlovic's announcement that the DOS is reflecting on its "removal from the MUP and re-organisation as an independent agency linked to the government, the president, and supervised by the parliament" sounds as a good, practically the only possible move. On condition, of course, that this new service be established without most of its current high officials, starting from the head himself - Rade Markovic, and that its jurisdiction and methodology of work be prescribed and organised in accordance with the practice in democratic countries. Dismantling of state security service is the basis necessary for the beginning of every healing therapy of the police in Serbia. Somebody like Mihajlovic, who was an active member of the Service, should certainly be quite aware of it.

A period of “spring cleaning” in the police, spectacular arrests and even more spectacular trials has been announced. However, one must be realistic. Mihajlovic as the future minister of police and his colleagues from the DOS, despite courage, efforts and good will, will just be able to broach the question of organised crime and the connection between politics and Mafia. This is a problem with which much more prosperous and much better organised countries, with established and unquestioned institutions, struggle with for years with changing success. But the most important is one thing: that Mihajlovic and the new authorities be constantly reminded of the given promises and that the public constantly insisting on the results of their work. Should it be otherwise, behind the thunderous words everything will be just sugarcoating the results of which in the forthcoming transition will be catastrophic. Every superficial solution, false solicitude or national and patriotic demagogy are dangerous – just consistent implementation of law that applies to everybody warrants the future.

Philip Schwarm

(AIM)