PARTY AGAINST "POSITION" AND OPPOSITION

Serb National Union - Party of Biljana Plavsic

AIM Banja Luka, 30 October, 1997

Hardly anyone believed that the constitutional, presidential and parliamentary crisis in Republic of Srpska (RS) would lead to foundation of a party which is believed by many to be the favourite in the forthcoming early parliamentary elections scheduled to take place on 23 November this year.

The Serb National Union (SNS), party founded by president of RS Biljana Plavsic who added her name to it for the elections, regardless of the outcome of the elections, will cause a number of controversies connected to its foundation, its program, commitments and composition of its membership.

The recent local elections could not reveal the true relation of political forces, because the Serb National Union was created on the eve of the elections and did not participate. It is impossible to know where the votes of its sympathizers and members went, although it is assumed that most of them were taken by the Serb Party of Krajina and Posavina.

At this moment, a month before the elections, only the Serb Demoractic Party (SDS) and the Serb Radical Party (SRS) have a clearly determined attitude towards the SNS, "octroyed" by president Biljana Plavsic. That is where the severest blows are coming from.

The severest is certainly the accusation that the SNS was founded by power-lovers, mostly former members of the SDS. It is a fact that almost the entire SNS until recently had belonged to the ruling SDS. Among them there are quite a few of those who occupied significant posts in state and party hierarchy of the authorities in RS. They are vice prime ministers Djuradj Banjac and Ostoja Kremenovic, discharged or resigned ministers like Novak Kondic, mayors or presidents of municipal governments like Sveto Mihajlovic from Bijeljina, Drago Ljubicic from Doboj, Radomir Trivic from Celinac or president of Banja Luka SDS Ostoja Knezevic and the first on the list of candidates of the SDS for members of the municipal assembly from Banja Luka Branislav Lolic. In Bijeljina, Banja Luka, Knezevo and other places, there are also a lot of members of municipal assemblies who were elected as candidates of the SDS and who have in the meantime transferred to the new party.

The opposition of the Republic of Srpska is still defining its attitude towards the SNS, but sharp criticism is increasing from that direction as well. So far the support of the most powerful opposition parties to Biljana Plavsic was also offered to the SNS, which could be tolerated because the new "rival" did not run in the local elections.

The attitude to the SNS after the elections is changing because of the increasing criticism that the party of the president of the Republic is given preference on Serb Radio-Television (Independent Social Democrats, Monarchists from the Nikola Pasic National Radical Party), and some, like Nikola Spiric, president of the Democratic Party for Banja Luka and Krajina, are sharply criticizing not only the SNS but also Biljana Plavsic herself.

What is in fact the Serb National Union? Majority of the opposition parties created either from factions of the SDS or outside it, are nowadays major or minor groups of people gathered around leaders which are trying to find a vacant space in the spectre of the world political ideas. The Serb National Union does not lag far behind, because it was created by "octroying" of the party of the president of the Republic Biljana Plavsic. It is, like majority of the others, a group of individuals many of whom wish to keep their old posts and privileges or who are trying to get hold of them if they did not hold them before.

In the ideological and political sense the SNS is the same as the SDS. This is admitted by its vice president Ostoja Knezevic, who is gradually emerging as the alternative leader of the SNS while the president of RS is carrying out her state duties. He publicly declares that he and his like-minded persons "have abandoned the SDS because the program of the SDS was not implemented in practice although it is good", in other words that "people who should have implemented it were not adequate". "I am not overjoyed that I had to leave the SDS. If negative elements could have been eliminated and a more favourable cadre structure achieved, I would not have left", Knezevic explains his act.

In fact, the SNS is a political reaction of a faction of the SDS to accusations of organized state crime and interconnection between state and political bodies. Probably that is why it consists of the so-called "mild" or the "intellectual faction" which has never been given the opportunity to do something important, however hard its members had wished to test their capabilities in state building. The "hard-core" faction consists either of those who have great personal interest in the SDS or those who blindly trust their leaders.

That the apple (SNS) never falls far from the tree (SDS) is also illustrated by the inauguration speech of Biljana Plavsic at the founding session of the party, when she said: "Nationalism is much more than a program, it is a patriotic feeling and creed". About her former party (SDS) Biljana Plavsic says that it stands on the position of "communist nationalism". It is easy to realize what ideological position the SNS holds by looking at the pre-election slogans which do not differ at all from those which belong to hard-core national factions.

Nevertheless, the SNS differs from the SDS by one very important issue - its democratic approach to politics. Contrary to the original movement which has never reached the awareness that political means must be used in politics and not the position of power, in the SNS exists the awareness that there are rules of the game which are valid for everybody and that verification of one's own political stands can be sought only by known means.

Essentially, the SNS is the beginning of breaking up of the SDS, but also a means for checking the quality and the range of the opposition which Biljana Plavsic obviously has not relied on as a serious and sufficiently powerful support.

Dejan Novakovic