BELGRADE - STRUGGLE AGAINST GENES

Students Divided

AIM Belgrade, 8 September, 1997

In a recent program of BK Television called "Tete-a-Tete" in which discussions sometimes tend to become extrtemely "concrete", especially when the leader of the Radicals, Vojislav Seselj, takes part in it, two important participants of the 96/97 Students' Protest faced each other: Dusan Vasiljevic and Cedomir Jovanovic. The discussion was very sharp. Jovanovic spoke in the name of the Students' Political Club, and Vasiljevic in the name of the Movement of the Students of Serbia and the Students' Initiative. Jovanovic reproached Vasiljevic's organizations lack of program and lack of serious commitment to the change of the regime in Serbia if they fail to clearly declare themselves against going to the polls in the forthcomibng elections, and Vasiljevic replied that their objective was stimulating freedom of thought and that for that matter they were organizing discussions in all parts of Serbia in which everyone is entitled to state their conviction.

Who is who in the students' movement, and why did the students, whose unity made them true leaders of the last winter's general revolt, start to split?

Before the protest, apart from the regime-controlled League of Students (among officials of which there was and still is a lot of members of the Socialist Party of Serbia), there were another two students' organizations at the Belgrade University: Students' Union (SU) and Students' Federation (SF). After introduction of the "multi-party" system in this space, political organizing was banned at the University, and regime propaganda has proclaimed any inclination of organizationsbased on interest towards an opposition party a mortal sin, so that both these organizations disassociated themselves from politics, but there are unmistakable signs of influence of the Social Democratic Union on the Students' Union and of the Democratic Party on the Students' Federation. A few influential members of the Union, for example Miroslav Hristodulo, from the Faculty of Mathematics, are at the same time members of the SDU.

"All the members of the Federation whom I know are in the Democratic Party", says Cedomir Antic from the Students' Political Club (SPK). At the beginning of the protest, leaders of the Federation (headed by Modrag Gavrilovic, son of vice-presidet of the DS and deputy of the Together coalition in Uzice) and the Union reached an agreement about united action. Of course, as Slobodan Homen, chairman of the Students' Parliament, says: "In all associations there are members of political parties. It is their right and we neither wish nor can ban it". This is correct, but nobody can claim that someone's membership in a certain political organization does not affect other aspects of that person's social engagement. During the winter protest which lasted for three months, there seemed to be no cracks in the united students' front, although rumours about quarrels in the Steering and the Main Committee and meddling of the Together coalition constantly circulated. "We simply had noone to turn to for technical assistance and we had to refer to the parties. But we immediately made it clear that they could expect nothing in return", Homen reminds.

The first unconcealed spark of the students' discordance flew concerning the question whether the protest should continue or be interrupted. Cedomir Jovanovic explains it as follows: "We believed that we should not give up the demand that persons responsible for the election theft be punished. About a hundred judges who had participated in it are still members of electoral committees". Homen explains it somewhat differently: "There were certain conceptual differences, but the essence was that the protest had already started to subside". Due to these developments Cedomir Antic and Vladimir Dobrosavljevic submitted their resignations to the membership in the Main, that is the Steering Committee. Soon after that the protest ended, and the students initiated creation of the Students' Parliament, an instuitution which was expected, in "peaceful" conditions, to preserve the newly acquired freedom. This body, being formed of two directly elected representatives of each faculty of the Belgrade University, University of Arts, Brothers Karic University and Divinity College, will be able to represent all the students and all their organizations and it was supported by all the leaders of the protest. This institution should primarily deal with questions of interest - accommodation, teaching process, autonomy of the University, but also keep up the spirit of the protest and react in extreme situations such as the one last autumn.

In the elections on 27 March, all the mentioned organizations (except the Students' Political Club), various and independent associations of students of certain faculties created during the protest, seceded branches of the League of Students (for example, of the Faculty of Communications) and protest steering committees nominated their candidates. Most of them were, nevertheless, independent candidates. Before the elections, a principled agreement was reached that the members of the Steering and the Main Committee would not be nominated. It seems that the interest of the students for the university political scene drastically dropped as soon as it started resembling the "real" one, because only 11 thousand students voted out of the total of 65 thousand attending, according to official figures, the university. None of the students' organizations won a majority in the parliament, and in fact they did not win it all together either. The parliament was constituted with great difficulties, after a few long, tedious and quarrelsome sessions.

Dusan Popovic, student of the Faculty of drama and former spokesman of the protest blamed it all on the press. Slobodan Homen was elected chairman, Nenad Konstantinovic, his colleague from the Law School, one of the deputies, and in general posts were distributed exactly as the newspapers had "lied": among the students' leaders. The parliament also elected its candidate for student vice-president, Viktor Todorovic, an excellent student. "The composition of the parliament shows that at the university there is no real, strong students' organization", Antic concludes. Others became aware of it, too, so in the middle to April, something new was founded, called the Students' Initiative, with the ambition to gather all the students' organizations.

In mid June, under the auspices of the Parliament, the Movement of the Students of Serbia was founded, consisting of students' organizations created during the protest at Novi Sad, Nis, Kragujevac, and Pristina University. the intention is to have each of these universities found its own parliament, and then constitute the Students' Parliament of Serbia.

"If we don't take into account the League of Students, the Students' Political Club is the only organizaton of students in Serbia which is not part of the Movement of the Students of Serbia", says Slobodan Homen. "this is because they are a political organization". The founding convention of this organization was held in the end of May. It was founded by those students' leaders who, although they consider the protest to have been successful, do not think that the job has been finished: "We bear the epithet 'Students'' because our entire membership and leadership are students, but we are also open to the citizens", says secretary general of the Club Cedomir Antic. The objective they have set for themselves is not just change of the regime, but also creation of the national state. Their Council gathers men like Mladjan Dinkic (the known economist), Slobodan Antonic, D. Jovicic, member of the Academy. They believe that the concept of the opposition should be redefined, and their ambition is to gather all democratic parties around their program. "If this does not succeed", says Antic, "we will constitute ourselves as a political party, although that is a big job. We do not believe that it is enought to establish some ten odd boards and run in the lections immediately after that".

"When you ask men from the Movement and the Club about relations between these two organizations, they have plenty of declarative mutual respect, but in fact these relations are strained because of the fact that standpoints they advocate concerning the elections (both orrganizations are very active before the elections, organizing discussions and various other actions) are to a certain extent incompatible. How would it be possible to go into action under the slogan 'Stop tyranny' like the Movement of the Students, and not reject running in the elections organized by the tyrants?", Antic wonders. "We suggested to them to continue insisting on punishing the judges, but they did not want to do it." Although some organizations from the PSS, especially the Initiative, strongly advocate the boycott of the elections, Slobodan Homen explained the standpoint of his orgnization as follows: "We do not think that these elections are that important that such serious conflicts should be started because of it. They will pass like so many so far. We think that we should explain to the people, primarily in the interior of the country, why we think that the regime must change. We do not have a short term aim connected with these elections and our action does not end on the day of the elections".

Differences between these two extremes of students' organizing obviously exist and are significnt, but not to the extent to paralyse all communication and even cooperation between them. Perhaps because the fields which each one of them wishes to act on do not coincide. The Movement is fighting for free university, the ambitions of the Club are nation-building. The biggest danger for both is that they will be used by a third party: the Movement for pursuing politics at the University, and the Club to enable the University to be engaged in politics. The undoubted result of last winter's protest, regardless of beginners' mistakes, personal ambitions and divisions, is the persence of the students on the political scene of Serbia, which the authorities will have to count on in the future, if not for love, for fear. There are sixty thousand of them in Belgrade alone.

Zoran B. Nikolic

(AIM)