SQUARED ACCOUNTS AND SALVATION FROM DOOM

of Vojvodina

Both the supporters and the opponents of the idea on the autonomy of Vojvodina agree on one thing: the central authorities have robbed and ruined Vojvodina.

AIM, Novi Sad, January 10, 1996

The Manifesto for the autonomy of Vojvodina, recently signed by 17 non-governmental organizations and opposition political parties, has as was to be expected, stirred up passions on the usually dull political scene of Vojvodina. The Manifesto insists on amendments to the Constitutions of Serbia and Yugoslavia aimed at the restoration of the economic, political, legislative and cultural autonomy of Vojvodina. It does not demand a state: monetary policy, customs, army and foreign policy would remain within the competence of Yugoslavia and Serbia. The people of Vojvodina always have to make a point of the fact that they do not "demand a state", since the ardent champions of the nation and centralistic authorities accuse them of separatism at the very mention of autonomy. The presentation of ideas from the Manifesto is under way, as are polemics on its key elements.

Neglected and Robbed

This is not the first document which - after the "the 1988 anti-bureaucratic yoghurt revolution" and the abolition of autonomy by the adoption of the Serbian Constitution - warns of the specificities of Vojvodina, its economic position and depletion of its resources, nor is it the first to insist on the traditional tolerance, multi-cultural and multi-confessional character of this multi-national community which the regime controlled media in Belgrade call the "north or Serbia".

Something else is new. In the first place it is the attempt to unite all forces considering autonomy a precondition for the survival of Vojvodina. Namely, it was for the first time that somehow totally irreconcilable political ideas were united through either the acceptance or rejection of the Manifesto. Even those who find the idea of any degree of autonomy totally unacceptable agree with the advocates of autonomy on one thing: that Vojvodina has been robbed and that enough is enough.

In other words, the problem of Vojvodina definitely exists. The issue of autonomy has gained legitimacy on the political scene. The reserved stand of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) probably proves only that they have not quite decided what to do. That there was no hue and cry in respect of this document can probably be accounted for by the fact that the hard core socialists in Vojvodina were disowned by their own party. Radovan Pankov, the leader of the anti-bureaucratic revolution and an outstanding champion of the struggle against the advocates of autonomy, lost his positions at the famous twelve-minute long session of the SPS Main Board presided over by Milosevic in person.

The Manifesto came into being at the initiative of the Vojvodina Club of the independent six-member group of deputies to the Vojvodina Assembly headed by Mile Isakov, a journalist from Novi Sad. The Vojvodina Club is a non-partisan association the existence of which the authorities are trying to sweep under the carpet by a tight media blockade, with the regime controlled daily "Dnevnik" sticking the worst of labels on anyone subscribing to the opinion of "the Vojvodina Club". Three parties have joined them: The League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina (Nenad Canak), The Peoples' Peasant Party (Dragan Veselinov) and the All-National Democratic Front of Vojvodina (headed by Zivan Berisavljevic, one of the leading figures of the provincial committee of the Vojvodina communists who were forced to resign after the October 1988 rallies).

In reply to the remarks that not enough parliamentary parties are among the signatories of the Manifesto, its authors insist on the parliamentary legitimacy of the six independent deputies, and refute assessments about the marginal importance of the signatories by stressing the impact the publishing of the Manifesto caused among the public. It met with the support of Democratic Party of Reformists of Vojvodina, the New Democracy of Vojvodina (although they did not sign it, probably because of the current political calculations as they are sharing power with Milosevic's Socialists), the Union of Vojvodina Hungarians and the Democratic Union of the Hungarians of Vojvodina. For the moment, in addition to the ruling Socialists and the para-ruling JUL (The Yugoslav United Left), Djindjic's Democrats and the Serbian Renewal Movement have not taken a stand on the issue.

Negative reactions to the Manifesto for autonomy came from the Democratic Party of Serbia (Vojislav Kostunica), The Communist League - Movement for Yugoslavia and the Radicals of Vojislav Seselj. Maja Gojkovic, a woman in the top echelons of Seselj's party explained to the party paper "Greater Serbia" that "a number of minor associations and unimportant parties...want a total and lasting Hungarisation of Serbian Vojvodina, its separation from Serbia, first in the educational, scientific and cultural fields, and in the second stage of the police, the judiciary and the army, and finally the separation of the state of Vojvodina from the rest of Serbia". Giving her arguments the weight of a conspiracy, she said that that "the total neglect and the plunder of Serbian Vojvodina by the Socialist mafia fully played into the hands" of such separatism.

The Document and the Polemics

The document sets out five demands among which the key one is the constitution of Vojvodina as a multi-national democratic community of free and equal citizens within the Republic of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and, at the same time, a modern European region with the possibility of interest-based linking with neighbouring and other European regions. This implies national equality, collective minority rights, full democracy, local self-government, private ownership, a market economy, a lay community of equal religions...The Manifesto demands autonomous legislative, judicial and executive powers i.e. independent regulation of these issues on its territory, and durable political and procedural guarantees of these rights under the Constitution of the composite state of Yugoslavia "of which Vojvodina is a constituent and independent part as a territorial and political entity within the Republic of Serbia". It also demands guarantees that it would be impossible to abolish its autonomy withouth the consent of the Vojvodina Assembly.

The autonomy project is further supported by figures. In present - day Yugoslavia Vojvodina accounts for 21 percent of the territory, 19 percent of the population and contributes 21 percent of the social product; while Serbia occupies 24 percent of the territory, has 25 percent of the population and accounts for 32 percent of the social product. According to the official census (1991) 16 nationalities live in Vojvodina and the "absolute majority of Serbs in Vojvodina guarantees that it would remain within the Republic of Serbia, so that secessionism cannot be attributed to the proponents of Vojvodina's autonomy." Available figures show that Hungarians are the most numerous (16.86 percent) national minority, but also that a comparison of the results of censuses from 1948 to 1991 shows a downward trend in the number of national minority members. The census the state is planning will most probably reflect the latest migrations during the last war: Vojvodina got many new inhabitants, but also lost many through emigration - both on account of the pressure of newcomers (especially at the beginning of the war), and because many draft dodgers fled the country.

Dragan Veselinov publicly initiated another "tough" topic having to do with Vojvodina. It concerns the right of Vojvodina to immigration legislation. "We must not allow the tragedies of the 20's, 40's and 90's to be repeated - for Vojvodina to be populated by Serbs from other areas, without its citizens having a say in it", he stated.

The description by Nenad Canak, leader of the League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina, of Vojvodina "as a well from which the centralistic authorities in Belgrade are pumping out money, people, food and oil" is much like what Stanimir Lazic (The Vojvodina Club) said about the interest of (all) the authorities in Belgrade being to control and exploit the economic riches of Vojvodina. Numerous are examples of this: pension and health funds, post, railway and television services are centralized...Since Vojvodina does not have its own revenues, and is "served" its budget from Belgrade, what happens is that Vojvodina contributes 43 percent to the budget of Serbia, getting back less than one percent of that budget!

The polemics was prompted by a sentence from the Manifesto which says that "apppropriate international and European organizations, as well as the governments of their member states, should undertake adequate steps and measures for the soonest possible realization of such a status of Vojvodina - as a sine qua non for a lasting settlement of the crisis on the territory of former Yugoslavia." The signatories of the Manifesto respond to their critics that the international community is involved up to its neck in the goings-on in Yugoslavia, that many things here are happening according to the diktat of the international community and that the Manifesto is indeed an attempt to avoid that diktat and offer a programme of our own. The Contact Group, the UN, the European Union, the Paris Conference have all been informed of this project on the autonomy of Vojvodina. As Mile Isakov points out, all future conferences on former Yugoslavia shall also be informed of this, for "Vojvodina was one of the members of the SFRY and is its rightful heir just like the former Yugoslav republics".

(AIM) Milena Putnik

Entrefille

A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE VOJVODINA PLAIN

Vojvodina has an area of 21,500 square kilometers (approximately equal to the area of Slovenia) with two million inhabitants (approximately equal to the populations of Slovenia or Macedonia). Arable land in Vojvodina covers some 1,622,000 hectares (which is approximately the combined area of Holland, Belgium and Luxemburg). Vojvodina has one of the largest hydrological networks in Europe and 1,400 kilometers of navigable waterways. The Danube-Tisza-Danube system enables the drainage of 1.2 million hectares and irrigation of 500,000 hectares of land. In present day Yugoslavia the share of Vojvodina in marketable surpluses of grain, corn and sugar beet ranges between 80 and 90 percent. Vojvodina produces 98 percent of Yugoslavia's gas and oil. "Without these resources and their unrestricted availability to the state, it would have been impossible to wage the war in Croatia and Bosnia, nor would it have been possible for Serbia to endure the sanctions, for which Vojvodina is paying a dear price while its inhabitants never had any say in this", point out the authors and signatories of the Manifesto for the autonomy of Vojvodina.

(AIM) Milena Putnik