DRESS REHEARSAL OF DYING

The devastated middle class, bribed "proletariat", enormously rich criminals in the establishment: that is the picture of Serbia after two years of sanctions and on the eve of a dress rehearsal of dying

AIM, Belgrade

If you happen to be a professor at a University in Serbia, at this moment your first concern is not how to maintain the academic level of your lectures to your starving students in an ice cold building, without the required teaching aids. The main thing is to take a deep breath each morning and decide to live through another day. Contrarily, you will not only sadden your family, but practically drive it to despair. And this is not pessimistic exaggeration or some witticism in bad taste.

At the Mining-Geological Faculty, according to the statistical data kept by the dean of the Faculty, Miroslav Markovic, every two months a staff member dies, and the last death, seventh in a row, that took place on the eve of the New Year, as he confessed, completely shattered him.

Mira Skarlo, assistant lecturer at the Faculty died on the eve of the New Year's holidays and her funeral could not be arranged for three full days. Her husband, a pensioner, simply could not find 800 billion dinars ( at that time 800 DEM) to cover the costs of the funeral, while the mentioned Faculty had on its account only 45 billion.

Grasping his head in despair, dean Miroslav Markovic calculated that the sum on the account was not sufficient even for the procurement of alcohol required for cleaning the preparations. He made his reputation as a well known scientists in academic circles working on three continents.The money he earned, approximately 100,000 DEM vanished in the first big state robbery of citizens (the so called appropriation of savings from old accounts). He now lives on a dean's salary of 15 "Deutch marks" and says that a point has just been reached when the very existence of the Faculty has become completely senseless. At the same Faculty, assistant lecturer Vladica Petkovic who is just preparing his doctor's degree, and supporting himself, his wife and baby on a salary of five "marks" and who regardless of his marked animosity towards the regime ("if they were human beings they would have left by themselves") considers as inexcusable what the international community has done by introducing the sanctions with their illogic consequences.

On the same day when dean Markovic was trying to find a way to bury his collegue, in the once rich town of Bor, two pensioners fell to the ground in a long row in front of a bank waiting to collect their money, so that the doctor who was summoned could do nothing but establish their death. As a result, two old men did no live to hear the joyfull news, namely the decision brought that day by the communal authorites to give each family in town two loafs of bread as a present.

AN ALIBI FOR DICTATORSHIP

To live in Serbia today means to be a witness to another process of dying, to the crumbling of the last remnants of middle-class society. A judge leaves the citizens to criminals and becomes a lawyer, a radio station journalist puts on an apron in the afternoon and serves guests in a cafeteria, a doctor blackmarkets foreign exchange on the street and teachers, the least resourceful segment of society, having received salaries that amount to one "mark" announce that the next school semester will not even begin, since they too will have to join the ranks of the grey economy, start black-marketeering, find some means to survive.

Two years have elapsed since the international community has discharged a bow at the regime in Serbia, which it used, with enviable instinct, for self-preservation as an alibi and changed its course to another direction. It is now more than evident that it primarily hit the middle class which is the strata that renders stability to society and makes it civic and democratic.

Many opponents of the regime who once mocked at the theory of conspiracy against the "holy and innocent Serbian people" (a slogan coined by RTS) are now themselves becoming the prisoners of a new thesis according to which the European Union has deliberately supported Milosevic through the sanctions, used him for the cleansing of the Muslims. Accepted him as the sole negotiator as he is "her" man. Why would otherwise those that are not guilty have to suffer?

• I am no longer certain in the real intentions of those who imposed the sanctions,says Nedeljko Vojvodic, professor of psychology and activist of the opposition party, the SPO, in a small town in Vojvodina.- It is more than evident they did not produce what they were intended to achieve, they only prolonged the fall of the regime. They practically gave an alibi for the consolidation of autocracy, for dictatorship.

Immediately prior to the introduction of the sanctions, his wife, a sculptress, decided to spent her savings which amounted to 500 "marks" on a long dreamed of trip to Venice. The trip was not taken, the money has long been spent, and today this pair of intellectuals lives on a sum for which it was not possible at the beginning of the month to buy as few as five "marks." Newspapers are no longer bought, there are no more new books, and the supplies of salt, flour and sugar will hardly bear throught until spring. As they said, for weeks now they haven't held a bank-note in their hands, as it is impossible to get even such a small amount cash money at a bank.

In the same country, but on the opposite pole of the social milieu, a successful Serbian-style businessman, close to the establishment, organized, to see his son off to the Army, a feast the old Romans would be envious of. "Flower arrangements" made of 50 DEM bank-notes were spinkled over the heads of the poor cousins who attended the event.

THE KING'S NEW ATTIRE

Owing to the "unjust and undeserved" sanctions, Milosevic reared his establishment with ease. Each member of the nomenclature, from the minister-thief to the criminal paid in hard currency, debt collector, could cry out: if the sanctions had not been introduced they should have been invented. Every screw in the mechanism of absolute power is well oiled, bought as a follower of the regime.

Al Capone himself would blush at the applied method of uncovered plundering of the population to the benefit of the establishment. The uncontrolled printing of money at the mint in Topcider financed the war, without the issue ever having passed through the process of democratic verification, since it was claimed that Serbia was "in hostile surroundings."

In the name of "hostile surroundings", the regime accepted a whole legion of officers and generals who were at one time supported by entire Yugoslavia. Their favour too was bought by the money from the Topcider mint. In Tito's Yugoslavia, for example, four percent of the national income was earmarked for the needs of the Army, and a soldier "cost" $16,000. Today, eight percent of the budget of the diminished state is earmarked for military purposes, which is only $400 per soldier. At present regular soldiers have to go hungry, while the higher military ranks,officers and generals whose goodwill has been bought have no need to face such problems. In addition, 70,000 well equipped policemen that make up the other "army" are also financed from the inexhaustable source at Topcider.

Every shopkeeper in a store where a kilogram of meat costs as much as 40DEM will tell a journalist that he receives a salary even though for days no one comes in the shop to buy meat.Railroaders or other employees of "required" social firms likewise get paid, frequently in hard currency and on the sly, if they only attempt to raise their voice against the regime. What kind of magic have their managers mastered?

The point in question is that their managers are "pets of the regime", part of the establishment, active members of the SPS. Under the constant pretext that the production of the major social firms must be maintained artificially in the conditions of the sanctions from the primary issue, their managers have become financial speculators. The money from Topcider given to them by the regime goes to the " streets" immediately, and is exchanged for hard currency. For the purpose of maintaining social peace, a part of the money is distributed to the workers, while the rest is used for other financial speculations. The consequences: stifled production, pacified workers and a billion high inflation rate. Nebojsa Savic, an economic expert points out that inflation and with it complete economic collapse cannot be avoided as long as there are those who can, without working, buy "marks" on the black market, sell them at a pegged rate and thus generate sky-high profit.

An international study has also indicated that the capital of large social firms has been transferred to hundreds of private accounts abroad, under the pretext that it was easier to do business that way because of the sanctions. In that way, part of the national wealth has been appropriated.

Behind the screen of the sanctions, imaginative banking machinations are simultaneously taking place. When citizens lost faith completely in the state banks after the seizure of their old savings, the regime created new, quasi-private ones, like the "Dafiment" and "Jugoskandik" banks through which they robbed, owing to extremely high interest rates the remaining hard currency assets of the citizens. Jezdimir Vasiljevic the owner of the Jugoskandik bank fled the country after that, while today Madame Dafina has become a protege of the state and the establishment has resorted to other "techniques": commercial banks have their own dealers on the streets who buy "marks" with dinars from the mint, undervaluating thus the ntional currency dramatically. By delaying only for a few days the payment of pensions or salaries,they gain excessive profit while depreciating to the point of absurdity the income of those who live on their salaries.

Among the privileged few are also the former socialist managers who have become private enterpreneurs overnight, the owners of their own social firms, who in spsite of everything continue to rely on the banks and are close to the ruling circles.

According to the words of Vladan Vasilijevic, a criminal sociologist, today parallel rule exists in Serbia which has common interests with the official one, the same objective - the achievement of domination for the purpose of exploiting and controlling national wealth without any restrictions, and its name is - organized crime.

Finally,the regime has a very strong foothold in the extremely unreliable "proletariat", another bought voting machine, to whom the sanctions on the short term are quite convenient.We have in mind a milion workers who are on compulsory leave "due to the sanctions", who receive completely worthless money (" no one may be layed while the sanctions are in force"), and who are actually the practitioners of the grey economy. They fill up the bootlegging buses,stand behind the counters in the main city streets, sell black-marketed goods,speculate with foreign exchange, and practically live better than doctors, judges and engineers.

Those well acquainted with the circumstances believe that precisely the mentioned "techniques" for the bare survival of the ruling circles, will at the end cut the branch on which the president of Serbia is sitting.

If Milosevic decides to continue to print money without any restriction, the unfortunate dinar, all the experts agree, will cease to exist. At a time when a police officer has a salary of one "mark", it will be difficult to rule "yet another day", and a "Romanian-style" outcome should not come as a surprise.

If on the other hand he resolutely embarks upon the cutting down of the budget, stops financing the war and "filling" enterprises from the primary issue, he will lose his establishment and gain some time, perhaps a month or two.

After everything, it seems that it would have been impossible to "sell" to the Serbs so easily complete inaptness as patriotism had not the sanctions, as in the well known fairy tale, given the king a "new attire". Had there been no sanctions, someone would have already shouted: The King is incapable, the king is power-loving. The king is naked.

Gordana Igric