Departure of Biljana Plavsic

Balance Sheet of Mistakes

AIM Banja Luka, 8 November, 1998

History is cruel like enchantress Circe. As the epic reads, she turned Odyssey and his comrades into swine when they came to her. History is quick in vengeance, but slow in rewarding.

Similar has happened to Biljana Plavsic. Her historical merit is that she has let vapour out of "the old overheated cauldron", before it burst and another several hundred thousand Serbs went up in smoke through the opening. But, what next? Her platform (and probably the platform of her party) resembles a red radish which has such thin peel that if you scratch it just lightly - the grey mass below begins to show. With this thin red peel Biljana Plavsic could not hide that, despite everything that has happened in this war, she has remained a prominent Chetnik nationalist.

The former president belonged to the ruling group of Serb nationalists who tried to ignore, condemn and reject the most glorious part of our history. Whenever she had the opportunity, she put an equation mark between the fascists and the communists, although 55 thousand of the latter were killed in the struggle against fascism during the People's Liberation Struggle (NOB).

When she was last in the USA, to "visit the Serbs in diaspora", she took along with her the highest decoration in RS - Karadjordje's medal, to decorate duke Momcilo Djujic who had been the leader of Chetniks in Croatia during the NOB. His Chetnik, the so-called Dinara division terrorised Serb partisan villages in Dalmatia and Lika. In Bijeli potoci near Korenica, his Chetniks slaughtered in the hospital 127 wounded partisans. They did not kill Germans and Ustashe, because if they had they would not have been able to stay comfortably in Knin and profit from supplies from Italian and German storehouses.

Despite everything that has happened, to ignore events and award one of the greatest fascist quislings in the Second World War with the decoration of the greatest Serb hero is more than absurd. By doing it, Biljana Plavsic disgraced the name of Karadjordje, insulted several hundred thousand Serbs who had participated in the Liberation Movement and dishonoured the post of the president of RS. In fact, she said good-bye to the post at the moment she did that. How come that none of her immediate associates and friends did not see fit to warn her not to do it, regardless of her inclination towards Chetniks? Has not it occurred to anyone that a head of a state must not make such mistakes, nor succumb to emotions, because she was the president of all citizens.

To persist in Chetnik ideology nowadays, when its quisling role was condemned by allies in the Second World War, marks a total moral fall. In the past election campaign at some gatherings Chetnik flags with skulls on them could be seen, Chetnik songs were sung, and in Banja Luka, at the gathering of the Serb Radical Party, the main speaker saluted those present by saying: "May God help you, brethren Chetniks!" This can be done only by demi-monde!

Some Serbs from the highest Serb leadership, during the war called the army of RS Chetnik army. Pursuant this name, Bosniac and Croat nationalists called all the Serbs Chetniks and "Serb aggressors". In this war, the Serbs could not have both fought in the liberation movement and be Chetniks. These two concepts simply cannot be put together. This finally should be clear before it is too late.

Biljana Plavsic deserves credit for having helped us come out of isolation of a retrograde "circulus viciosus", and this opened a democratic process and contributed to establishing links with the world, and raised hopes. Continuation of this process demands more knowledge, wisdom and no deviations. This does not refer only to Biljana Plavsic, but also to all those who are simulating implementation of the Dayton agreement or those who are openly undermining it. People should be educated and drawn out of this hopelessness, and not deluded further. After four years of frantic giving vent to one's low instincts, revelation of lies and delusions, do we have the courage and nerve to admit it and turn a new leaf?

As much as I supported the struggle of Biljana Plavsic against Serb isolationism, crime and everything that was happening in Pale, I am just as much against her negative attitude to NOB, socialist development and communists. All three nationalistic movements in B&H destroyed monuments and memorial statues and tablets of the liberation movement. It seems that the Serb nationalists were the most zealous. They have destroyed the greatest monuments of the liberation struggle on the territrory they controlled - Kozara, Sutjeska, Sehitluci, Drvar cave, Korcanica and others. This could not have been done without organized state terror about which Biljana Plavsic simply had to be informed. The people who did that expressed in this way their historical and moral degradation.

In order to enable RS come out of this desperate state, the government of Milorad Dodik was formed, which in just a short time made several big steps forward which mark the beginning of the end of this tragic situation. After the defeat in the elections, Biljana Plavsic gave a nervous statement in which she accused the West for her debacle (Vecernje novosti, 28 September, 1998). This statement did not contain even the fundamental statesman's and political wisdom. As she says, the international community "exerted pressure " on her all the time to intensify activities in the direction of "centralization of B&H", that her cooperation with the international community was experienced by "many voters as legal withering away of our republic", and that is why she lost the elections, or else she "would have been the president for another two years". Like a true layman and debutante.

At one moment, Biljana Plavsic has done great things for RS and she must be given credit for it. For the necessary step further, she had neither the capability nor the ideological commitment. And this is one of the essential reasons of her election fall.

Dr Mico Carevic

(AIM)