DIRECTION OF LEFT RIGHTISTS

"Rotarists" in the Movement of the Reds

AIM, BELGRADE, April 7, 1995

"In the cultural history of this country I will be a director, not a minister". This is what a year ago Ljubisa Ristic stated, a controversial director, a communist out of season, a Yugoslav without a country, "a pure and honest leftist", a revolutionary from 1968 in conflict with everyone from Triglav to Djevdjelija. Then recently, in Centre "Sava", amidst pink and red clouds, he was proclaimed the leader of the Yugoslav Associated Leftists (JUL), because Dr Mirjana Markovic, the wife of President Milosevic, the author of poetic diary notes published in "Duga", and the creator of Yugoslav Leftists, decided to surrender the leader's post to him.

"We have made up our minds to have Ljubisa Ristic at the post, because he is a more prominent person than I am", Mirjana Markovic said modestly. "Considering the situation we are in, I had no right to refuse", the unconventional director explained.

The public was shocked.

ENTERTAINMENT FOR THE PEOPLE

Ristic is a happening in itself for the media. There is no self-respecting journal that did not arrange to get an interview.

"As far as I know, Dr Mirjana Markovic is a university professor. Her only power is to express her stances and that is what she does. I do not see that she does anything else", Ljubisa Ristic insisted. "Her good reputation among the public will grow the better acquainted people become with her. Just as she has a better reputation in my eyes since I've got to know her. The marriage of Slobodan Milosevic and Mirjana Markovic is very rare by mutual esteem, respect and support. You can rarely come across something like that in marriages nowadays. What you immediately see and feel is mutual warmth and complete understanding, so that I think it is something very nice for the two of them, but useful for everybody else" - Ristic was moved in one of his interviews.

The game in solving this unusually directed political riddle could begin. New Tito and Dolanc, some called the new leadership couple Ristic-Markovic. Will they be "directing" expensive performances, the others were curious to know. The attempt of abuse of cultural patriotism of that specific species of dinosaurs - the Yugo-nostalgic, succeeded, concluded the third.

In NIN, they wonder whether director Ljubisa Ristic, as the president of JUL is the right person in the right place, or is he just another flower in the hair of Dr Mira Markovic.

• Mira is Suslov in a skirt, never out in front - general Stevan Mirkovic explains, who is the former Communist fellow-fighter of President's wife. - She should not be underestimated, she knows how to deal with people, she resolves everything with a smile, she always acts from the rear, and everything is under her control. She is in fact the needle, all the others are just threads she pulls.

• Ristic is the right man at the right place - curtly and ironically, the lawyer Rajko Danilovic comments for AIM, returning the blow to Ljubisa, the leftist, who struck him and the Liberals in early seventies. - His star, as you can see, still shines.

• I cannot say anything until I meet him. This is just his first ball. One should wait for the others. He might submit a resignation, too - Director of Subotica Open University, Bosko Kovacevic, and an acquaintance of Ristic, tells us a little confused.

And a columnist of "Politika", Bogdan Tirnanic, wrote as follows: "As concerning Ljusa, it is O.K. He has never concealed his ardent leftist convictions. He wore this model when it rained, when it snowed, even in summertime, at the beach... Last Friday, when the news leaked, even close Ristic's friends, and I am with pleasure including myself among them, were not capable of guessing who would be the caliph instead of the caliph, because we were simply "blocked" with the awareness about the very existence of the organization at the head of which Ljubisa would find himself two days later. Therefore, they made fools out of us. This is certainly worth their while ... How did they think of taking a man of such artistic integrity, for the sake of their image, whose political ambitions are equal to zero. But, we shall see yet! The top-list of our political surprises is not forever either!"

The uproar in the media, so needed by JUL, still continued when Ljubisa Ristic was already back in London at his director's job once again.

Only occasionally, and unofficially, one could learn that Dr Mirjana Markovic was elected President of the Management of JUL. In that capacity this woman from the shadow received members of the Chinese delegation which she informed about the "efforts of the Leftists to contribute to peace and cooperation among nations". She added that progressive and humanistic forces should play the decisive role in interruption of the war.

LEFT HAND IN A DEEP POCKET

Nothing in JUL is as it seems to be.

For instance, they noisily stress the existence of some thirty leftist parties which formed JUL, but in fact, these are anonimous, politically dead organizations, almost with no members. It therefore turns out to be the "movement" of a single party (or rather a group for pressure) - the League of Communists - Movement for Yugoslavia.

While the authentic culture worker, Ljubisa Ristic, makes a lot of noise in the public, while on the other hand Zorica Brunclik, turbo-folk music star, joins JUL.

Dr Mirjana Markovic says that she supports with her whole heart everything that "contributes to liberating man of poverty, exploitation, humiliation and ignorance, as well as peace and cooperation among nations", and at the same time, actor Desimir Stanojevic is elected member of the Management (by secret ballot), and he had back in 1990, as "Nasa Borba" claims, joined the Serb Chetnik Movement in Nis. He supported volunteers of this party even financially, and then was expelled from the party for "excessively extremist stances".

While members of JUL occasionally criticize, as "oppositionists", the national and "hard-core" policy of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), for example, Slobodan Cerovic, a strong man of the SPS, is elected in the Management, or Dragan Ilic, who is a dependable member of the ruling party. A new member of the Management of JUL is also Zivko Soklovacki from Novi Sad, who is at the same time the current President of the Provincial Committee for Information of the SPS. Official of the SPS, Radmilo Bogdanovic, and the spokesman of this party, Ivica Dacic, were both present at the presentation ceremony of the new leadership of JUL. And Dusan Mitevic, also a member of the SPS, openly declares that he feels inclined to JUL.

It took JUL a whole year to form its personnel, and it has no organizational structure in municipalities, but it does have (together with the SPS) the building of the former Central Committee which was evaluated to be 300 million German marks worth. Its finances are handled by a powerful Holding Company consisting of seven enterprises - "Komet", and there is hardly an embassy in Belgrade which is not protected by "Komettim", one of the members of the Holding.

At the last elections (when they were still the League of Communists-Movement for Yugoslavia), only some 30 thousand people voted for them, but they are the ones who decide about editorial posts in journalism, and it is not a secret any more that they have "swept" the personnel of the army. The story goes for quite some time that air-force officer Velickovic is the new man who could replace general Perisic at the post of the Head of the General Headquarters of the Army of Yugoslavia. He is also "Yugo-nostalgic" in the manner of Mirjana Markovic, nostalgic for the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and the partisans. He is also from Pozarevac and a peace-making general.

Declaratively, JUL counts upon workers and peasants, and seeks support among the lower social layers. And yet, it is nowhere to be found when they are at strike. The ideologist of the party, Mirjana Markovic, from a comfortable villa, when war destruction was at full swing, and the country swept by rampant inflation and hunger, wrote her poetic diary about clouds over Stig or the cricket living in the house where she was born.

Every third member of the Management of JUL is either a director or the owner of a successful firm. Zoran Cicak, an activist and an advisor in the state "Beobanka", explains this with the historical need of the time when "the central battle for the media and the capital is being fought". Money needed for the movement is procured by directors of BTC (Belgrade Trade Company)(Nenad Djordjevic, a former policeman), NIS (Oil Industries of Serbia) (Dusan Unkovic), Hotel "Metropol" (Slobodan Cerovic), "Kluz" (garment industry) (Dragan Ilic), "Godomin" (Agricultural Industrial Complex) (Dragi Mitkovic), Institute for Oncology (Nikola Mitrovic)... And the inevitable (never actually sacrificed) Zoran Todorovic Kundak is also here, who was among the first fighters at the renowned Eighth Session of the League of Communists of Serbia which brought Slobodan Milosevic to the surface, and who is now the owner and director of the enterprise "Tim".

JUL is in fact a symbiosis of financial and political power-wielders, wittily called the party of directors from Dedinje. Businessmen who spare no money for the glorious red future and lyrical socialism of the Milosevic couple, are also called "Rotary-ists" too. Their task is to see to it that the SPS in the future (at the next elections?) does not find itself on slippery ground, left without a convincing victory.

• They will try to pick up that third of the electorate which is undecided now - those who were devoted to socialism, disappointed with the SPS, but do not wish to join the nationalists. Those are the people who can be heard saying that they are fed up with politics. JUL is there to obtain a certain number of deputies, or to directly order its sympathizers to vote for the SPS - general Mirkovic claims.

According to some assessments, JUL is in fact getting ready to win 150 thousand votes, get into the parliament, and (taking over the role of New Democracy) complete the voting machinery of Slobodan Milosevic.

All that is left to do is wait for the workers and peasants to run to their directorial political embrace (honest intelligentsia has already done it). As things stand at the moment, this can happen only in a dream (or a theatre performance) of Ljubisa Ristic.

Gordana Igric