MORE POWERFUL THAN HE USED TO BE

After Radovan Karadzic's "Removal" from Office

Low political rating of Radovan Karadzic in just a few days of the tempest which threw Prime Minister Kasagic around like a dead leaf, sprang up enormously. Karadzic emerged from the latest developments as a man who made a great profit after having invested practically nothing. He gave Biljana Plavsic what he did not have - contacts with foreign countries, he drew Bildt and Solana into arbitration about what is legitimate and what is not in internal relations in the Republika Srpska, and ensured a comfortable position for himself of the one who would be concerned only with employing demobilized veterans and accomodation of refugees in the forthcoming "more peaceful days".

AIM, Banja Luka, May 21, 1996

The exciting episode which commenced with the dismissal of Prime Minister of the Republika Srpska (RS), Rajko Kasagic, and continued with "self-discharging" of power of the President of RS Radovan Karadzic, is already completed. Why do Serbian and international political factors refrain from admitting it, is a question in the domain of political honesty, or of force of political wisdom.

As a reminder: on May 15, President of the RS Radovan Karadzic "discharged of duty" Prime Minister Kasagic; the official Belgrade and representatives of the international community consider this "discharge" illegitimate; on May 16, the discharged prime minister meets high representatives of the international community for Bosnia & Herzegovina (B&H) Karl Bildt and Secretary General of the NATO, Javier Solana, who consider his discharge illegitimate; on May 17, Chairman of the Assembly of the RS Momcilo Krajisnik is seen in a visit to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic; the very next day, the Assembly of the RS decides to discharge Rajko Kasagic and he accepts the decision. The mandate to form the new Government is given to Gojko Klickovic.

The Skill of Giving the Non-Existant

In the midst of the tempest in which the former prime minister Kasagic, from being "Mister Nobody" as christianed by diplomats in Brussels, in a single day became Mister Somebody, Radovan Karadzic transferred his foreign policy competences to Biljana Plavsic, one of the two vice-presidents of the RS. "More peaceful days are ahead of us. In this period our first and foremost task will be to carry out many jobs concerning resolution of the status of refugees, employment of demobilized veterans, revival of the economy, reconstruction of the country...", Karadzic explained this "deaccumulation" of jobs.

While Belgrade regime daily Politika interprets the latest developments in the RS as "departure of Karadzic", spokesman of Karl Bildt (giving a new nuance to the same event) declares that "the beginning of the end" of Radovan Karadzic is "ensured". This is a case od "washing hands of" the affair, an attempt to present it as something completely different, or simply a acse of pure of cynism. A man whose beginning of the end has been ensured is departing!

But, whoever wishes to see, can see that political rating of Radovan Karadzic which was in the past year declining head-first, in just a few days of the tempest which threw around Prime Minister Kasagic as a dead leaf and held several representatives of the international community in its whirl, has risen enormously.

The head of the Banja Luka Social Liberal Party, Dr Miodrag Zivanovic, observes that the President of the RS made a formal concession to the international community - he "removed" himself from office, and came out of it stronger than he used to be. "Essentially, Karadzic is in a very comfortable position, like Chairman of the Assembly of RS Momcilo Krajisnik - he is the boss and the executive of many affairs, but not responsible for any of them. He built a wall of people around him", Says Zivanovic.

It appears that Radovan Karadzic came out of the recent developments as a man who made a great profit after having invested absolutely nothing. He gave to Biljana Plavsic what he did not have - contacts with foreign countries. He drew Bildt and Solana into arbitration about what was legitimate and what was not in internal relations in the RS, therefore, into a specific discreditation. Finally, he ensured a comfortable position for himself of a man who would be concerned only with employment of demobilized veterans and accomodation of refuhgees in the forthcoming "more peaceful days". Almost - idyllic!

The way he started, Karadzic is on the way to neutralize yet another conflict which existed in relations between the authorities and the opposition in the RS: in the phase in which he has agreed to hide (behind Biljana Plavsic), the next move of his political adaptability could be moving of the Government from Pale to Banja Luka which would be a deft concession to the opposition which insists on regional identity of this region and mitigation of complaints because of centralization of power in Pale. In a way, his new prime Minister Klickovic announced this in his statement that "in the future all ministers will work in a single place, in the seat of the Government, which will very soon be determined by the People's Assembly of the RS". Banja Luka as a temporary capital of the RS is imposed by the forthcoming "arbitration" about Brcko, since Brcko would have a completely different role than it has now, as the place which would cut off the rest of the territory of the RS from the "capital" - Banja Luka.

An additional problem for the opposition leaders who are mostly from the region of Banja Luka, is the skill with which Pale neutralized the conflict which had begun with Kasagic's dismissal. With no possibility to publicize any of its programs or stanced in monopolized media, Banja Luka opposition welcomed the conflict between Kasagic and Karadzic as a possibility to say publicly what it was in favour of. For the same reason, the entire opposition block, except for Vojislav Seselj's Radicals, took sides with prime minister Kasagic although it had never liked him. "He is nothing much, but what can you do, when there is noone else", an opposition leader commented on this unnatural symbiosis.

A Glance Towards Belgrade

By defending the former prime minister, the opposition of the RS showed primarily that it was in favour of politics of opening to the world and recognition of "the existence of the state of Bosnia & Herzegovina in the scope in which the world recognizes its", as one of the members of Banja Luka intellectual forum formulated it. For the same reason, the oppositionists tried to create a personality out of the average person of Rajko Kasagic. It so happened that even the Mayor of Banja Luka, Predrag Radic, sided with Kasagic, although he had been one of those people Kasagic used to denounce to the headquarters in Pale, while he was president of the Executive Board of Banja Luka as "Karadzic's man". It should also be added that Kasagic was the one who had forbidden Banja Luka TV to let Mayor Radic appear in any of its programs, least of all to address his citizens. It is interesting that later, when he became prime minister, Rajko Kasagic complained that, due to a ban from Pale, that very mass medium was inaccessible to him.

The opposition, unable to get access to a microphone or stand before TV cameras, in a situation when its arguments in the controversy with the authorities are refuted, can do nothing but glance towards Belgrade. But Belgrade is acting as if it did not know what it was all about.

First, the spokesman of the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia, Ivica Dacic, minimized the conflict between Kasagic and Karadzic, saying that it was just a pre-election trick. Then the Government of the FR Yugoslavia assessed dismissal of Kasagic as something illegitimate. After that, Momcilo Krjisnik said that Belgrade was not aware of the amendment of the Constitution of RS and in this way explained the reaction of the mother-country - and the affair died down.

Belgrade is behaving like in the case of the Serb "state" in Croatia in which it tried regardless of the cost to install the authorities it could control, and then suddenly gave up on it all. Because just as at the time before the fall of the "Republic of Serb Krajina", the authorities of Serbia are now burdened with internal problems: strikes and threats with more strikes, decline of production, possibility of a new wave of super-inflation...

Belgrade can now count on a division of interest spheres with Karadzic's Serb Democratic Party (SDS), with an aspiration to control Banja Luka region, which sounds frivolous and necessarily implies overestimation of its influence. Belgrade could also count on all the opposition parties uniting under the umbrella of the Socialist Party of RS (SP RS) which is a sister-party of the SPS, which is irresponsible because the opposition parties can be united by a personality, rather than a party, whom Belgrade failed to win over.

And there is the third solution: Belgrade is supporting Radovan Karadzic at the moment. Because, by his "self-discharging", redistribution of power and dismissal of the prime minister who referred to Dayton accords as if he had carried them in his pocket all the time, he is actually doing nothing but testing that very peace document.

The ease with which Kasagic's fall was accepted, the confused reactions to shifts and division of jobs from Pale, the controversial statements of international mediators on the destiny of elections in Mostar, all speak in favour of the assumption that Radovan Karadzic has adapted to the general trend, that he has sensed a moment of wavering and skilfully used it. "Ensured beginning of the end" at this moment means absolutely nothing.

(AIM) Perica Vucinic