Political Scene of Serbia 1997-1998

The Year With No Spring

A year after the regime of Slobodan Milosevic under combined three-month pressure - exerted by the citizens' protests from within and the international community from without - not only admitted the theft in the local elections, but handed over power in thirty odd Serbian towns, things dangerously started to resemble the proverbial "nothing will change and everything will be forgotten". Serbia has become radicalized, it clashed with Montenegro, entered the war with Kosovo

AIM Belgrade, 10 March, 1998

Several hundred demonstrators formed an unpleasant welcoming party for the dressed up guests of the Belgrade city assembly, who had intended to observe the first anniversary of the opposition authorities in the capital of FR Yugoslavia. Ladies in evening gowns and their appropriately clad escorts were not spitted and sworn at and kicked by their ideological opponents, militant Leftists, but - by their recent coalition allies.

This picture - with the perhaps unnecessary addition that all the regime media indulged in the described event - represents well the public political scene in Serbia in the end of February and in the beginning of March this year. A year after the regime of Slobodan Milosevic under combined three-month pressure - exerted by the citizens' protests from within and the international community from without - not only admitted the theft in the local elections, but handed over power in thirty odd Serbian towns, things dangerously started to resemble the proverbial "nothing will change and everything will be forgotten".

A year ago it seemed that the regime of the left coalition in Serbia was staggering as a groggy boxer in the ring, while at the same time Vesna Pesic, Vuk Draskovic and Zoran Djindjic were simply too busy to reply to all the invitations to be guests of the most important world capitals.

The newly established local authorities competed in publishing data about financial and political embezzlements and abuses of their predecessors and, therefrom, in the announcements of the new age. It seemed that the pessimistic slogan from the 1992 students' badges - "Spring has Come, But I live in Serbia" - is gradually losing its cynical, ambiguous meaning. Cheerfulness, optimism and good-manners, characteristics of the three-month citizens' walks in Serbia spread with such speed that it sometimes made even the incorrigible sceptics shrug their soldiers in silence. Not for long, however: it turned out that fear of occasional euphoric outbursts of the leaders of Together coalition - symptom of unfounded conviction that they were leading the citizens' protest and not the other way round, that the citizens were leading them - was more than justified.

It was not necessary to wait for long for the open conflict and dissolution which the leaders of the Together coalition were recklessly walking into. Vuk Draskovic, whose image of the strongest opposition leader was greatly shaken by the urban (therefore, political) speech of Zoran Djindjic and sensible stance of Vesna Pesic, accused these two for "treason" because they failed to support his candidacy for the post of the president of Serbia. The undoubted weight of the accusation was increased by the fact that Vuk Draskovic had whole-heartedly supported candidacy of Djindjic for the mayor of Belgrade and that he had "permitted" him to publicly wash his dirty nationalistic laundry from the quite recent excursions (and "elevations") in support to Radovan Karadzic and the Bosnian Serbs in the war against the whole world. Logistic support was provided by Danica Drakovic in the capacity of the director and journalist of Srpska rec. On the other hand, Djindjic's "pragmatic" reasoning (such as: "it is better to be mayor of Belgrade than have Vuk for the president") turned out to be an infallible - failure.

As a politician, Vuk Draskovic was most consistent in advocating his candidacy for president of Serbia. After Together coalition fell apart last year, he experienced two consecutive defeats in the presidential elections in which Vojislav Seselj - after symptomatically long counting of votes

• lacked less than one per cent for a victory. Vuk Draskovic directed his campaign mostly - and from the standpoint of state media solely - against his former coalition partners, despite (or perhaps for that very reason) the fact that they decided to boycott the elections. In the manner of the darkest Bolshevism, Draskovic "took over" Belgrade television station Studio B, having sacked the team whose return he had previously welcomed. With the same speed and in the same manner, mostly by jumping down their throats, other local media were also taken over. At the same time, Draskovic bragged about the agreement he had reached with Slobodan Milosevic not to close down during the election campaign, the electronic media which operated without permits, which is a part of the routine procedure of the regime in the struggle against media which have escaped state control.

In less than a year, the political scene of Serbia has, therefore, significantly changed. In March 1997, on it there was the left block (Socialist Party of Serbia and Yugoslav United Left of the couple Milosevic-Markovic, and New Democracy with a few deputies who ensured the parliamentary majority to the Left), the Radical rightists of Vojislav Seselj and a kind of right centre in the form of the Together coalition with a few minor and just established parties with "centrist" ambitions. A year lated, only the Left, the Radicals and the Serb Revival Movement (SPO) have remained on the stage. By united efforts of the regime and the SPO, the Democratic Party of Zoran Djindjic has been pushed to the margins in the media. Slobodan Milosevic, who has in the meantime moved to the post of the president of FR Yugoslavia, cannot give Vojislav Seselj back his title of the verified favourite oppositionist and associate, not only because of the international community which sees in Seselj the Balkan nazi-extremist, but much more because of the completely unexpected rise of popularity of the Radicals in the electorate of Serbia. Therefore, Vuk Draskovic, politically weaker than ever, appeared to be an ideal "partner".

The past year has been extremely challenging for the mechanisms of Milosevic's regime, with the split of Montenegrin Socialists and the victory of "reformists" headed by Milo Djukanovic perhaps being the heaviest blow for the system of rule which Milosevic had successfully constructed during the past decade. His last year's evolution in this sense is more than significant: it turned out that the regime "successfully" operated by means of orders and decrees, without either the federal or the republican assembly, and with the help of customs and political measures such as practical establishment of the border between Serbia and Montenegro after the attempt of keeping Momir Bulatovic in power ingloriously failed.

But, defeats have never really bothered Milosevic. It seems that normal or at least those which are slightly closer to normal circumstances undermine his power quicker and more profoundly. That is why it is not at all improbable to assume that after the first American signal of good will due to Milosevic's support of Biljana Plavsic and Milorad Dodik in B&H - opening of the consulate in the USA and permit for landing of airplanes on American airports - something had to happen that would postpone for a long or at least a short time all possibilities of further normalisation. The real or fictitious signal of the international community - both the Serbian and the Albanian party pinpointed Richard Gelbard - that resolution of the problem of Albanian terrorism in Kosovo could be approached, was interpreted as the approval of loose or none at all control of police violence in "liquidation of terrorism and Albanian gangs" in the beginning of this month.

Even if not premeditated, the excessive application of police force in the Albanian villages in Drenica speaks about

• mildly speaking - incapability of Milosevic's regime to show anything between brutal force, when it can, and complete submissiveness to dictate, when forced. In fact, it is demonstrating another characteristic capability: to take political hostages. In brief, with the "operation Kosovo", Milosevic has united players on the political scene of Serbia, because there have been no disonance in the general support to anti-terrorist action, nor any restraint in the evaluation that it is possible to get even with terrorists only by force and over the gun sight. For the left coalition which is in power in Serbia, for its "opposition" in the form of Seselj's Radicals, Draskovic's "revivalists" and "national reconciliators", as well as for the majority of other political parties, only policemen were killed in Kosovo. For paying last respects to all those who were killed, similar to the time during the citizens' protest in 1996-97, when several ten thousand people stood silently paying their last respects to the Albanian who died because he had been beaten up by the police, nobody on the political scene of Serbia had the strength this year. The propaganda in regime media in the case of police action in Kosovo showed that war-mongering skills from the beginning of dissolution of the "big" Yugoslavia have not disappeared, nor that the media have less talent for stirring up hatred.

Analyses of the political discourse of Slobodan Milosevic from the beginning of his rise to power showed the highest frequency of the concepts of "homogenization" and "mobilization" as conditions of public life. In the case of developments which marke the anniversary of the citizens' protests in Serbia, Milosevic has accomplished both goals - at least on the public political scene. In this context, the current judicial pressure on media who have not sufficiently whole-heartedly supported the anti-terrorist struggle in Kosovo may be considered to be a very significant symptom of the intention to carry out the latest homogenization and mobilization to the greatest possible extent. Newspapers which were accused of support to terrorism are those which have not promptly enough published official data on the number of the dead and have not frequently enough used the terms such as "terrorist gangs", or moreover, left the possibility open that civilians were also killed in police action.

This time mobilization and homogenization are carried out with unselfish and voluntary assistance of potentially very dangerous Vojislav Seselj and Vuk Draskovic, self-proclaimed foreign minister of Yugoslavia. Indeed if his dream about becoming the minister comes true, Milosevic will profit again: lack of understanding of the international community for "us" will not be the result only of "anti-Serb conspiracy" but also of the more than modest capabilities of Vuk Draskovic to talk in languages understood by the world.

In this sense and without being ironic, the sanctions which are since two days ago re-imposed on FR Yugoslavia, as the only imaginable true effect, will have Milosevic's survival in power. For an indefinite time.

Aleksandar Ciric

(AIM)