Political Changes in Serbia

Struggle for Vuk

A traffic accident or an attempted assassination of Vuk Draskovic, contrary to so many mysterious deaths in the past several years in Serbia could be the turning point or at least mark a new relation of political forces.

AIM Podgorica, 8 October, 1999 (By AIM correspondent from Belgrade)

Is a key rapprochement between the League for Changes and the Serb Revival Movement in sight? More precisely: will Vuk Draskovic call his supporters and followers to anti-regime protests and demonstrations? At this moment there does not seem to be a more important question in the political life in Serbia. It was due to circumstances raised on 2 October at 12.20 hours, on the main road in the Ibar river valley, two and a half kilometres from the turn towards Lazarevac when in a serious traffic collision four men were killed: Veselin Boskovic, director of the agency in charge of construction lots of the city of Belgrade and high official of the Serb Revival Movement (SPO) and three members of Draskovic's security team - Zvonko Osmajlic, Dusko Rakocevic and Dragan Vusurovic, when by pure miracle Draskovic was just lightly injured, and when he declared on that same day that it was an attempt on his life. And since after these words were an open accusation of the regime, it is difficult to believe that this incident will not have political consequences in Serbia.

What has actually happened? At a completely straight part of the road, a green Mercedes truck full of sand as Draskovic stated, at a distance of five metres from the Audi 80 driven by Boskovic in the opposite direction, suddenly made a turn to the other lane and the two vehicles clashed. Boskovic was killed on the spot, and a second or two later, BMW 520 crashed into the truck which stood sideways in the middle of the road and in an explosion, Osmajlic, Rakocevic and Vusurovic were killed. A few seconds prior to that, riding in a Jeep with federal deputy and member of SPO Gordana Anicic, Danica Draskovic, Vuk's wife and sister of Veselin Boskovic had driven by the truck. This small column of vehicles had set out from Belgrade on the road to Ravna Gora last weekend.

At first Draskovic's declaration that this was an attempt on his life and that he "by the will of God was the only one to survive while all the others around him were dead" was assessed as hasty and emotional. The men who were killed were his brother-in-law and close associate, and members of his security team who had loyally and devotedly accompanied him for a number of years through all his ups and downs. And then, the course of the investigation seemed to have offered extreme credibility to his words.

The truck driver who had escaped from the place of the accident remained unknown to this day. Moreover, the ministry of the interior of Serbia still has not even determined who is the owner of the truck. One need not be an expert to establish that if nothing else such sloppiness of the police escapes understanding especially when one knows that Serbia is the country with the biggest number of policemen per capita in Europe and that members of the special police units prove to be exceptionally efficient whenever beating up peaceful citizens is concerned. It is possible that the driver is at the same time the owner of the truck; it is also possible that he is somewhere in hiding or that he has already left the country by some secret path, but this does not mean that his name should still remain a mystery.

The truck he was driving had to be registered, the number of the engine, too, and the unofficial version of Politika that the police had discovered the original owner of the truck, and even the man who it was sold to, but that it could not find the third owner whose identity could not be determined because there were no papers on ownership transfer is quite unconvincing. This would mean that the truck had never been stopped on a road by traffic police which would have established that it did not have the required papers; that this truck had never delivered any goods to anyone in Serbia and that therefore there are no witnesses who would help with the investigation; that the owner - driver (or two men) have no neighbours who could have recognised from the detailed description whose truck it was...

Besides, somebody must have ordered the sand, somebody had to load it, it was supposed to be unloaded somewhere... Transportation of sand is not the same as transportation of heroine. Due to sloppiness of the investigation, numerous rumours started circling , such as that the truck had not been registered in Serbia at all and that it was travelling with false licence plates, that after a call on the mobile phone the driver had received just prior to the accident he left the cafe where he had sat, that an accomplice was waiting for him in a car... Hardly anyone believes that this was a pure coincidence, just as during Tito's era hardly anyone believed that Slobodan Penezic Krcun, the then head of Serbia's state security service, had really died in a traffic accident.

It is hard to believe this especially because in the past three years head of the public security of the ministry of internal affairs of Serbia colonel general Radovan Stoicic Badza and secretary of Yugoslav Left Zoran Todorovic Kundak, both close associates and friends of Milosevic-Markovic couple, were also killed, but their murderers have never been found. At the height of the war owner of Dnevni telegraf and Evropljanin Slavko Curuvija was also killed: everything that had preceded the crime (politically motivated court proceedings pursuant the law on the press, accusations in state media of collaboration with NATO) led to the conclusion that it was a political liquidation. The result of investigation was the same as in the previous two cases. The same is the case with tens of bosses of the underground who, could not have spread their activities, it was generally believed, if they had not had connections with certain state services, since they themselves did not hold any public offices.

At the funeral of Veselin Boskovic, Draskovic cursed "those who are for ten years already building their happiness on misfortune of others, those who are all this time sowing hatred, destroying the state and killing so many people and doing so much evil". That he had the regime in mind, nobody needed to be told. And the regime, if it really wishes to eliminate suspicion, it must be aware that it should do everything possible to clarify the incident that took place near Lazarevac. Because, as Zoran Djindjic, president of the Democratic Party and one of the leaders of the League for Changes, says, nobody except the regime has the logistics and organisation necessary for an assassination, if that is what it was, such as the one on the main road in the Ibar river valley.

There is another element which shows that this traffic accident might not have after all been an accident. Contrary to the League for Changes, since the end of the latest war, Draskovic's SPO is advocating early elections through negotiations with the regime, without pressure from the street protests. Leader of Nova Demokratija, Dusan Mihajlovic, says that the current political struggle in Serbia can be brought down to the "struggle for Vuk" and that the party which succeeds in attracting him to its side will have majority in the "elections or in the street". From the standpoint of the regime, Draskovic's running in the elections which would be scheduled by the regime would certainly make them legitimate even if all the other opposition parties boycotted them.

From the aspect of the League for Changes, the return of SPO to the streets and squares would give the protests a general political character. On the one hand there is the offer of a "non-attacking pact", presence in state media and a respectable number of deputies in the parliament; on the other, support of international community, the leading position in the opposition and the possibility to finally change the regime. If Mihajlovic's assessment on the "struggle for Vuk" is true, its paradox lies in the fact that the regime does not at all seem to be preparing to schedule elections and that it will not agree to them without street protests, which have in the current organisation of the League for Changes become quite lukewarm.

Therefore, if Draskovic does not wish to lose political credibility, there is not much time for decision-making. If the regime truly means to win him over and accept a part of his demands, it is not clear why would somebody from the structures of the regime or close to it try to kill him. If, of course, that somebody had not concluded that Draskovic believes that negotiations with the regime are pointless and decided to join the demonstrations or that his price of cooperation is too high or that he is a threat to him.

Everything seems to be possible in this space, even an assassination and all kinds of manipulations and political exploitation of a tragic traffic accident. In any case, the leaders of SPO must find a true and convincing answer to the question in whose interest it is at this moment to kill Draskovic. General answers such as of "all those who do not like us" do not mean anything: perhaps the leadership of SPO does not wish to make commitments until two investigations do not yield results: the official one and the one made by the party and its lawyer Borivoje Borovic. "There are too many dubious circumstances which lead to the conclusion that this was an attempted murder of Vuk Draskovic. Without any doubt this will have enormous consequences and nothing will be as before"; Ognjen Pribicevic, advisor of the leader of SPO declared on 2 October.

Local organisations of this party were even more radical. "The true Serbs are at the square", declared deputy of SPO in Nis municipal assembly Miodrag Stankovic Uca, known for the hunger strike when the police brutally arrested and beat up Vuk and Danica Draskovic in 1993, and this year because of unpaid daily allowances to the members of the reserve forces of the Army of Yugoslavia. "The attempt on the life of Vuk Draskovic spilled the cup and as of tonight, SPO is with you" said president of this party in Bor Miki Jakosevic to the local leaders of the League for Changes. And president of SPO organisation in Subotica Djuro Vucelic said on the day of Boskovic's funeral that the "murderers have started a sly war against SPO and a war they will have".

However, the leadership of SPO pacified its membership by sending word to them that major and radical decisions were not made by local committees but by the main board. Its session is scheduled to take place in a few days, but there are plenty of accusations that this was an attempted assassination and announcements of "extremely significant political consequences" coming from high officials from the very centre of SPO.

All the parties and leaders of the League for Changes with more or less reservations support Draskovic's declaration that this was an attempt on his life. Pribicevic declared that SPO was favourably changing its attitude towards the League for Changes and coordinator of this coalition, Vladan Batic, admitting that there were no direct talks, declared that this was a rapprochement of stands.

The denouement still lies ahead. New political surprises should not be excluded. For instance, sudden scheduling of elections, split of the party, a new state of war motivated by "subversive activities of the internal enemy"... Judging by announcements, it seems certain that the death of these four men, regardless of whether it was caused by a traffic accident or an attempted assassination, should not remain without visible effects on the social life in general. But hardly anybody is really ready to bet on it.

Philip Schwarm

(AIM)