A Temporary Government

Yugoslav Parliament to Choose New Prime Minister and Cabinet on Tuesday, July 24

Could Ranko Krivokapic, the vice-president of the Socialist Democratic Party, be right in saying that Dragan Pesic will be Yugoslavia's last prime minister, with a shorter term than his predecessor?

AIM Belgrade, July 20, 2001

On July 17, when Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica announced Dragan Pesic's appointment as the new prime minister designate, he said something peculiar: "The shorter this government lasts, the greater its success!"

Kostunica said this adding that one of the new coalition government's basic goals would be to redefine relations between the republics that constitute the Yugoslav federation. The new government is made up of the ruling Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) and the opposition Montenegrin Together for Yugoslavia bloc. In saying this, Kostunica was thinking of a new Yugoslav constitution that should precede federal elections, which the DOS pledged to hold before coming to power in Serbia.

Cynics, however, could interpret "redefining relations in the federation" differently and say that Dragan Pesic's team had completed this task even before officially being chosen on July 24. Pesic is an economist in Podgorica and a member of the Socialist People's Party's (SNP) leadership. The Socialist People's Party is the biggest party in the For Yugoslavia coalition. Less than three weeks after former prime minister Zoran Zizic resigned, the other republic in the federation, Serbia, has skirted on the edge of repudiating the federal government, similar to Montenegro, which does not acknowledge it. "It is not a government that is supposed to govern," said Serbian Premier Zoran Djindjic, who, as of recently, has not missed a single opportunity to invite Montenegro to hold a referendum on independence by the end of the year.

The Montenegrin referendum was announced for March next year. Unless something like Zoran Zizic's resignation happens again, which came at a time when Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus was trying to ensure as much funding as possible at a donors' conference for Yugoslavia, thus jeopardizing Labus's position at the conference, maybe Pesic's government will, by amending the constitution, manage to achieve one of its most important tasks by then. Namely, it might succeed in negotiating the reprogramming and writing off of Yugoslavia's debts to the London and Paris clubs. Both republics would benefit from this, regardless of where they plan to go in the future.

Despite the Socialist People's Party's attempts to do away with Labus as a key negotiator in this, Labus, judged by many the most successful member of the government, succeeded in keeping his seat in the new cabinet. Another important international negotiator, member of the former government and president of the Civic Alliance of Serbia, Goran Svilanovic, will also stay at his post as foreign minister in the new government. Jovan Rankovic, a member of the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) is being mentioned as a likely candidate for finance minister.

Zoran Zivkovic will also be representing Serbia in the new, reduced government. Zivkovic is vice-president of Djindjic's Democratic Party, and will probably retain his post as interior minister. Also representing Serbia will be Rasim Ljajic, the leader of the Sandzak coalition, as minister of minorities once again.

The remaining four portfolios and prime minister's office went to Montenegro, and were divided as follows: two went to the Socialist People's Party and one to the People's Party (NP) and Serb People's Party each (SNS). According to unconfirmed reports, Slobodan Krapovic (Socialist People's Party), the minister of defense in the former cabinet, will also retain his post, and Bozidar Milosevic, a fellow party member and director of the Niksic steel mill, will be appointed minister of transportation and telecommunications. In the former government, Zoran Sami (Democratic Party of Serbia) and Boris Tadic (Democratic Party) were in charge of these ministries which now constitute a single ministry. Petar Trojanovic (Serb People's Party), who was aide to the minister of trade in Zizic's cabinet, will probably be placed in charge of the ministry of agriculture and domestic trade in the new cabinet. That leaves the ministry of justice for the People's Party; Savo Djurdjevac is a likely candidate.

No one seemed to care when the makeup of the new cabinet was announced, as if in support of the cynical viewpoint that the new government will administer the smallest territory in Europe – the Federation Palace building in New Belgrade. Only Vladan Batic, the Serbian justice minister and president of the Democratic Christian Party of Serbia, said of the government that, "personal stances are not important," because the "government is transitional."

The term, "transitional government," is justified not only by the announced constitutional amendments and elections that are to follow, or the referendum on independence in Montenegro. Calls for a referendum in Serbia are growing in number. Zoran Zivkovic (Democratic Party), Vladan Batic (Democratic Christian Party), and representatives of the New Democracy party have so far publicly endorsed the holding of such a referendum. Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia, on the other hand, said talking about a referendum in Serbia only added to the tensions and recalled that the DOS did not win elections in Serbia by advocating independence.

Some observers are saying that this does not necessarily imply a serious threat to the cabinet's existence. Serbia provides for the federal budget, and hence the wages of the federal government. According to these observers, the talk on a referendum in Serbia is not an authentic wish by Serbia for a federal divorce, but is in fact a reflection of the power struggle in the ruling Serbian coalition, an attempt to "undermine" President Kostunica by the part of the DOS that supports Premier Djindjic.

Public opinion polls, however, show that the number of people in Serbia who are irritated by the tug-of-war between Serbia and Montenegro is rising. One of the latest such surveys, conducted by the Institute for Social Studies from Belgrade in July, showed that 59 percent of the respondents wanted Yugoslavia to stay intact, which is almost ten percent less than in March this year. In the same period, the number of people endorsing an independent Serbian state increased from 18 to 29 percent. The fact that an opposite trend was recorded in Montenegro, Serbia's tiny sister republic, for the first time, with the number of people supporting a joint state increasing and the number of independence supporters decreasing, is not very encouraging for pro-federation advocates, Zoran Lutovac, a researcher at the institute, said. Lutovac believes that the increase in pro-federalists is a result of the clashes between the DOS and Socialist People's Party, in which the Socialist People's Party improved its image and became a political player.

Misa Djurkovic, an associate and researcher at the Institute for European Studies, believes that the conflict between the coalition partners in the federation government has a much more profound effect than merely changing people's opinion, which no one has cared to consult on this issue. He says that the agreement on the new Yugoslav government has gone a step further in discrediting the federal government.

"The number of ministries has been cut, the rule book for the government to be assembled according to the coalition agreement is also unconstitutional, because it introduces radical confederal elements: equal representation of republics in the government and an equal say in decisions, veto rights for the prime minister or deputy prime minister who are from different republics," Djurkovic said.

"All of this was requested by the Socialist People's Party which allegedly endorses the joint state, but it is in fact the result of the DOS's (which also endorses federation on an equal footing) stance towards the Montenegrins during the crisis surrounding former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic's extradition to the international war crimes tribunal," Djurkovic said. He added that, "all of the things that the ruling Montenegrin Democratic Party of Socialists is always citing as proof of the impossibility of a future joint state, were resorted to when Milosevic was extradited."

Dragan Pesic's appointment as prime minister designate has given the separatist Democratic Party of Socialists one more argument. Democratic Party of Socialists senior official Miodrag Vukovic gloatingly said that even the pro-Yugoslav Socialist People's Party had acknowledged that the federation no longer existed: "The fact that none of the leaders of the Socialist People's Party accepted to be prime minister shows that the party is aware that Yugoslavia no longer exists, that in this Yugoslavia, at the federal level, which Djindjic likes to describe as a double expense, nothing but a farce can happen, as we ourselves said in the past several days and months," Vukovic said.

Ranko Krivokapic, the vice-president of the Social Democratic Party of Montenegro, the Democratic Party of Socialists' coalition partner, agreed with Vukovic, saying that those participating in creating the new federal government "are pretending to be the government of a state that has no borders, government, people, or federal units."

"If anything is interesting in all of this at all, then it is that Pesic will have a shorter term of office than his predecessor Zizic, but that he will be remembered longer, because I am certain that he will be the last, at least formal, prime minister designate of this Yugoslavia that died long ago," Krivokapic said (Zizic's government took office in November, last year).

Pesic's coalition partners demonstrated an equal lack of understanding: Dragan Soc, the president of the People's Party, one of three members of the coalition For Yugoslavia (along with the Socialist People's Party and Bozidar Bojovic's Serb People's Party) was also disappointed with the Socialist People's Party's decision to appoint someone not belonging to party top circles.

Nebojsa Medojevic, an independent economist from Podgorica, also said that this decision showed that the Socialist People's Party no longer took Yugoslavia seriously. He said, "The election of Pesic, certainly not a prominent figure in the Socialist People's Party, to the post of the country's most important official," shows that the People's Socialists' ostensible support of a joint state with Serbia "is political propaganda for Montenegro's political scene, and that everyone is getting ready for what is politically inevitable: two internationally-recognized independent states, that will forge some sort of alliance."

Vera Didanovic

(AIM)