Serbs Excluded from Government

AIM Zagreb, June 24, 2001

Today in Croatia we are witnesses to an interesting practice: an unidentified individual has decided to launch a comprehensive campaign of eliminating Serbs from the institutions of local government. This has in turn led to absurd situations in which incredible coalitions are being made for the sake of a single goal -- stopping Serbs from becoming members of local government bodies. The consequence of this is yet another absurdity: participation of Serb political parties in local government is now at a much lower level than it was at the time Croatian Democratic Union was in power, despite the fact that their election results in the latest local elections were generally much better than four years ago.

In Vukovar, for example, the Independent Democratic Serb Party won over 30 percent of the vote and according to an inter-party agreement should have received the offices of deputy mayor and deputy chairman of the city council, as well as three seats in the city presidency. Twenty four hours after the agreement was reached, however, representatives of the Croatian Democratic Union, Social Democratic Party, Croatian Party of Rights and Granic's Democratic Center met. At the meeting they decided to simply exclude the Serb party from the division of offices at the local level and to distribute public offices within the so-called Croatian bloc. To make the situation more cynical, the Independent Democratic Serb Party, for which, let us stress again, every third inhabitant of Vukovar voted, was offered the post of deputy chairman of the city council. The party, of course, rejected the offer.

"It is politically irresponsible, legally untenable and uncivilized and backward to establish mono-ethnic government in a city with so sensitive an ethnic composition. Something like that has never happened in the history of Vukovar," representatives of the Serb party said in a press release. The foolish decision of the Croatian party is not only irresponsible, legally untenable, uncivilized and backward, but it could have serious adverse effects on citizens of Vukovar and the wider region. The question which has been raised by OSCE circles and European Union senior officials is the following: should international administration be once more introduced in the Croatian Danube Basin region as during the UNTAES era, and should Gen. Jacques Klein be once more installed as governor?

The question is well grounded because mono-ethnic government in the region is a direct challenge to all the international community's efforts to establish normal coexistence in the region and restore trust between Croats and Serbs. Namely, the situation there is much worse than it was even in the worst days of the Tudjman era, when the Erdut agreement ensured participation in local government for the Serbs in Eastern Slavonia and Baranja. The current five-member authorities could not care less about the Erdut agreement, but neither do they care about their own citizens: had they given any thought to the future of the region they would have realized that the international community and international humanitarian organizations do not plan to send any money to regions where the multi-ethnic principle of government does not exist and where the democratically expressed will of the voters is disregarded.

Had they thought about that, they certainly would have not formed a mono-ethnic government in Beli Manastir. In this town the Serb Independent Democratic Party won second place, but the local Croatian coalition formed new bodies without a single Serb representative. The same happened in Darda, where another Croatian consensus was reached (from Racan's Social Democratic Party to Djapic's Croatian Party of Rights) to eliminate Serbs from local government, except for one, insignificant post. Or in Knin, where Serbs also became opposition, thanks to an inter-Croatian alliance. Or in Kistanje, near Knin, where the Social Democratic Party formed a coalition with the Croatian Democratic Union so that the Serbs would be pushed aside...

Had the current rulers thought about anything, they would have provided for instruments for holding the inaugural session of the local administration in the Kordun municipality of Vojnic. Invoking the names of Ustasha leaders and carrying banners saying "Croats will never be a minority in Croatian Vojnic" or "We did not die to let you form Krajina peacefully," about a hundred protesters prevented five Social Democratic Party and three Serb aldermen from entering the municipal hall, while letting five aldermen of the Croatian Democratic Union in. Since the latter could not form a local government on their own, its inauguration was postponed until further notice. The protesters, in fact, wanted to force the five Social Democrats to form a coalition with the other five Croats to bypass the will of the voters and to exclude the Serbs from the local bodies. The most interesting occurrence was the fact that police failed to do anything to ensure a peaceful inauguration of the local town council, and a government representative, Marija Horvatic, said "the people of the region have every right to act in accordance with their convictions."

After the incident in Vojnic, the Racan government felt it was proper to say that it will "insist on strict implementation of constitutional law on the rights of ethnic and national communities and minorities," and that it will "do everything in its power to ensure that, on the basis of data on the percentage of ethnic minority residents in municipalities, towns and counties from the latest census, all local bodies shall enforce the law." It is not clear, however, how the government plans to achieve this given that in most of the municipalities, towns and counties in question the bodies of local government have already been formed. But something else is quite clear: the statement was meant for the sensitive ears of the international community, which is increasingly changing its attitude towards the current Croatian authorities. Namely, international diplomats initially believed this government was pronouncedly anti-nationalist and that it would never venture to discriminate against ethnic minorities. But now, however, they are beginning to realize their mistake.

Ivica DJIKIC

(AIM)