SLIGHTLY DRAMATIC, WITH REMOTE CONTROL

Novi Sad Without Socialists

Citizens of Novi Sad have got a new Government formed by the coalition Together, only two days after it had seemed that the Serb Revival Movement (SPO) had found a partner in the League of Social Democrats of Voivodina (LSV) and its leader Nenad Canak who had been presented to the journalists as the future prime minister

AIM Belgrade, 12 December, 1996

While thousands of students were setting out on their midday walk around streets of Novi Sad as a sign of protest because of the theft of election results in Belgrade and other cities of Serbia, not failing to spill volleys of whistles and a lot of other funny noise in front of the building of the local daily Dnevnik warning it for making the media darkness in Voivodina completely non-transparent, and while the weekly Nezavisni was dispersing the darkness by selling its second special issue which will "until further notice" be published daily, Novi Sad got its first Government without Socialists.

In local elections in this city, coalition Together has convincingly won by having taken 39 mandates. The Socialists were calmly pushed to the margins. Without problems experienced by other cities, they have agreed to only six deputy seats. Respectable lawyer from Novi Sad, Slobodan Beljanski, defines this as follows: "The challenge of the city, even in tiny bits of its administrative remains, was silently delivered by the compromised authorities to the former opponents".

Together, Separately, Together

Key city posts, after perhaps a necessary quantity of dramatism, were divided among the partners from the coalition Together, which ceded one of the three vice-president's posts in the Assembly to coalition Voivodina. The mayor of Novi Sad in the next four years will be Mihajlo Svilar (50, member of the SPO), director of enterprise Grafika. Prime Minister of the city will be lawyer Caslav Popovic (51, member of the Democratic Party) who did not manage to get into the City Assembly as a deputy, because he was defeated in the elections by Aleksandar Kravic (member of coalition Voivodina), bass player in the band which accompanies the famous singer Djordje Balasevic.

The coalition Together was preserved, and the posts divided on the principles of parity. Just two days prior to it, nothing seemed so certain.

Ever since victory of the opposition in Novi Sad was proclaimed, speculations lasted about who would get into the key city offices; whether ones were blackmailing the others and how; whether anyone was leaving the coalition Together and who that was; whether someone was offering the prime minister's post to Milan Paroski and who that someone was (which is considered to be extremely frivolous and insulting for citizens of Novi Sad); according to what could be heard in lobbies, doubt was confirmed that the coalition Together in the case of Novi Sad might easily after winning power - split.

A kind of a shock was caused by the statement that it would be proposed to the city councillors to elect Mihajlo Svilar the mayor and that Nenad Canak would be nominated for the prime minister of the city government, who is a leader of the League of Social Democrats of Voivodina, a party in favour of the autonomy which together with the People's Peasants' Party forms the coalition Voivodina. The coalition of these two Voivodina parties fared surprisingly well in all the elections. They won 10 municipal mandates in Novi Sad, and in the second round, wherever they competed with representatives of the coalition Together, they won. From the very beginning Svilar was believed to be the most likely candidate for mayor since the SPO won 22 mandates in the city Assembly, eight more than the Democrats. Nenad Canak (37), the vehement fighter for complete autonomy of Voivodina, was the biggest surprise of them all.

Exceeding the Limits

This piece of news was given to the journalists by Mihajlo Svilar personally, at a special press conference by which he promoted, as he said, a new style of communication with the media and openness of the new city authorities. Canak was also present at the conversation with the journalists. The explanation that this proposal was the result of a wish to have a strong government sounded highly democratic ("two coalitions, four parties"), as well as that Novi Sad was offered broadness, that the new authorities would not (as the Socialists) persist in arithmetic division of posts according to the number of mandates won by individual parties. To a question whether "coalition partners" knew what was "discussed here and now", the answer was affirmative.

To what extent this was serious - and if it was, how realistic it was - remains for every actor of this drama to assess on his own while evaluating the size of the profit drawn from this business.

The warning of the usually well informed circles that "by tonight", the list of the names of new officials in Novi Sad could be completely changed very soon became true. It did change. The day which passed between the press conference and the session of the Assembly was sufficient for everybody to "have their knuckles rapped".

The offer made to Nenad Canak to take over for some time the administration of the city could have been interpreted as a very serious warning to the Democrats, but also as a test of tolerance of the party leadership of SPO in Belgrade. The Democrats do not take the meaning of autonomy deeper than the "autonomy of the wallet", and there are opinions that the pre-election "Declaration on Voivodina" of the Serb Revival Movement was nothing but a series of principles. Canak's acceptance to form the Government was described as an attempt to exceed the limits of the status of a constructive opposition in local administration agencies agreed by the coalition Voivodina and avoid the role of the "tip on the scale".

The Trojan Horse in Novi Sad?

Information leaked that Vuk Draskovic warned Novi Sad leaders of the SPO to stick to the earlier agreement with the Democratic Party and sent word what should not be given to the Coalition Voivodina. Neither was Dragan Veselinov, leader of the People's Peasants' Party and interpreter of the stances of coalition Voivodina very happy with the news that Nenad Canak could be the prime minister of Novi Sad ("We don't wish the coalition Voivodina to be the cause of dissolution of the coalition Together"). He believes that this decision of the League of Social Democrats of Voivodina surprised and worried the voters and sympathizers and that they do not approve operational cooperation with Voivodina branches of parties with headquarters in Belgrade. "Our voters want development of independent Voivodina forces which is questioned by such an agreement".

Both Svilar and Canak were, in fact, told that the dose of self-initiative was too strong for the moment. Autonomy-lovers, nevertheless, have an advantage: they can always say that they wished to save the city from receivership, because the coalition Together had not been capable to reach an agreement on distribution of the power they had won; they can repeat that the parties with headquarters in Belgrade have remote control of Novi Sad and tease their opponents with the story that "the remote control was just transferred from the left into the right hand".

Something else is quite certain. The idea of autonomy, after almost ten years of anonimity and public contempt, came out in the open on the political scene of Voivodina and Novi Sad. This idea imposed itself because of the increasing discontent of the population with centralization of everything that exists, but also with election results. The autonomy of Voivodina is becoming a program which everybody who wishes to control this space will have to take seriously into consideration.

Citizens of Novi Sad, who "certainly have a lot vices in common" - as the well known writer, Aleksandar Tisma, writes in the first issue of the special daily edition of the weekly Nezavisni - "but it is certain that aggressiveness and indiscretion are not among these vices", are in the meantime greeting university students who are passing through the city every day demanding that legitimate results of the second round of elections in Serbia be recognized, and who are trying to see through the reasons why Novi Sad managed to avoid the destiny of Belgrade, Nis and other cities.

In the daily edition of Nezavisni which called respectable Voivodina intellectuals to cooperation, Slobodan Beljanski warns:

"Is not the absence of obstruction of election results a Trojan horse? Will Novi Sad be used as an experimental estate where the defeated regime will be proving that even honest elections can be sufficient for the debacle of the winners? Will to our misfortune, party narrow-mindedness prevail, struggle for prestige, obscure bargains and jovial political mischievous persons? I am afraid. When I see among the rebellious students, who are sincere and insufficiently informed, pronounced nationalists, supporters of Cosic, Vukovar suppliers and quartermasters, all-Serb choristers and pilgrims of war adventures, I am afraid. I am afraid that we will remain in a city which will always lag behind its possibilities. A city where who knows for how long sins of communism will be dragging on as remnants of its swampy origin."

(AIM) Milena Putnik