Echoes of the Session of the National Assembly of RS

Neither Fish nor Fowl

AIM Banja Luka, 30 December, 1997

"Today, we might lose power", Dragan Kalinic dramatically warned his party colleagues at one of the numerous breaks of the Saturday session of the parliament in Bijeljina. "Don't give me that worst possibility, Dragan", Momcilo Krajisnik tried to calm him down. As a man of the regime in which it was clear that it was difficult to win power and easy to lose it, Dragan was very right. By an effective manoeuvre, Biljana Plavsic proposed Mladen Ivanic prime minister-designate, a man who is believed in the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) to have been lectured only one subject during his several-month long study visit to Great Britain: how to overthrow the Serb Democratic Party (SDS).

The course of the parliament session in Bijeljina showed that the Serbs are especially fond of hating each other. Deputies from B&H Federation, whose arrival to the sessions was in the beginning expected with suspicion like disembarkment of H.G. Wells' Martians in New York, were this time noticed only at the first vote when it was established that three of them were missing. The rest of the session was devoted to hair-splitting about the Constitution and rules of procedure in which the faction of the President of Republica Srpska triumphed. The prime minister was proposed, the next session was scheduled for 12 January, and agreement was almost reached concerning the chairman of the parliament. The only question mark is the SDS. The choice this party is faced with is quite new, because so far they chose with ease between power and honour, while this time fear of Dragan Kalinic proves to be as a lucid interval on the eve of definite agony. For men for whom it was until recently easier to abandon territories than ministers' posts, the present choice between participation in power and full transfer to the opposition is equal to the dilemma between hemlock and cianide.

That the choice will not be easily made (or perhaps not at all) was confirmed by negotiations among parties in which the SDS and the Radicals persistently designated Aleksa Buha and Gojko Klickovic for prime minister. On the other hand, Krajisnik and Kalinic, as men accustomed to political alchemistry and acts which are not intended to be seen by the unordained in the world of secret politics, let Buha and the company wear themselves out by proposing themselves and the other "fresh" cadre like Klickovic. Kalinic and Krajisnik, supported by the always-ready-to-help Milosevic with whom they spent the night two days prior the session, tried to impose on Biljana Plavsic Aleksa Milojevic as the candidate for prime minister, who is the director of the office for privatisation of RS and its author, and who is often copnfused with the manager of the lottery of RS. Krajisnik had a clear calculation: Milojevic is an economic expert, he was not seen too often in the company of those who believe that in the future even the Patriarch will be chosen at a session of the party main board, and who was not on the list of those with the lightest fingers in RS made by Biljana Plavsic.

When the session finished, Buha was naturally mad both with Krajisnik and with Plavsic to whom he sent word that there can be no reconciliation between them in this world. During that time Krajisnik was just worried. As a representative of the school of thought for which the only negotiations better than those which last long are those which never end, Krajisnik believes that he has plenty of time to explain to Plavsic that they were born to help each other or put spokes in each others wheels, depending on what they agree to do. The difference between Krajisnik and Buha is obvious: the former, known merchant, thinks that worse than little power is only less power, and the latter, being a philosopher, operates in absolute categories: you either have power or you have not, and that is that.

That is why the next line of conflict in RS will probably open within the SDS. Three very loose things are preventing it from escalating right away - the still insufficiently clear concept of Ivanic's government, the still undefined result of long negotiations between Radovan Karadzic and the Hague Tribunal, and remainders of the love from Belgrade. After that, Krajisnik could suddenly remember that he was the first to support Buljana Plavsic for the post of the president of RS, while Buha could awaken as some kind of a Seselj on the left bank of the Drina, who contrary to the original, has no answer for any of the questions, but has a question for every answer.

Nevertheless, the last straw appears where nobody expects it to be: Mladen Ivanic is an ambitious politician who thinks a long time ahead, so that it is not all the same for him whether he will become the prime minister with the vote of Krajisnik or a man who responds to the name Safet Bico. In his announcement of the principles on which he will establish his cabinet, Ivanic offered another chance to Krajisnik. According to the idea of the sixth prime minister-designate, the government of RS will be conceived as neither fish nor fowl. In other words, Ivanic believes that he will be able to make a government in which half of the members will be there due to merits done for their parties, and this part should satisfy the criteria of a government of national unity. The other part of the government will be given to professionals, that is it will be the part of the government of experts.

Ivanic has made his first political move in the new role so skilfully that both Krajisnik and Milosevic are hardly resisting to congratulate him. Because, in the spirit of their way of thinking, Ivanic has done it more for his own sake than for the sake of the government. With the part of the government consisting of representatives of different political parties, Ivanic is trying to ensure a broad political support not only of realists from the SDS but also of the faction in the Serb National Alliance of Biljana Plavsic dominated by men with a strange interpretation of certain concepts, who call their own ambition democratization and who differ from the parent party, the SDS, only because they call what the cosmic category of treason is for SDS by no less cosmic category of - crime.

It is, therefore, less important that in the government there will sit, for example, Ivanic or Rajko Tomas on the one side together with Velibor Ostojic, Ostoja Knezevic or Dragutin Ilic on the other. It is more important that the first two will constantly reproach the party leaders that they will demand for every piece of computer equipment imported from America either party approval or reciprocity in fiddles from Serbia, while the others will keep asking Ivanic and Tomas whether they were recommended to the post by voters or by Carlos Westendorp. Therefore, not much time will pass before cynics will say that if Ivanic wished an efficacious government he had been educated in Great Britain too short, and if he had only his own interest in mind, he could have remained there.

Nevertheless, Ivanic's proposal has caused a new disturbance in the already feuding SDS. Krajisnik will not be too disgusted with the idea about the government of nationally united experts, if he manages to squeeze in an expert of his own to the post of the minister of police. Buha who will call it Krajisnik's political haggling, believes that there is still enough money in the cashbox to buy at least three Socialist deputies, but there will be no understanding in the SDS for this: the Socialists are not people suffering from war pathology, that is they prefer to take several times a little than everything all at once. Therefore, Buha will be able to do nothing but proclaim that RS was occupied, grow a beard and withdraw into the underground in the tradition of radical leftist sixties the ideals of which are not strange to him.

One thing is for certain: RS will soon get a government with Ivanic at its head. Whether this government will be inaugurated by Krajisnik, Bice or Westendorp, does not really matter. It is a thing which has made Krajisnik smile again, and a thing which may make Biljana Plavsic forget for a moment her known contempt for him, which in politics not even women are entitled to any more.

Ivan Djordjevic