Milosevic still in the saddle: West thwarts Serbian opposition

By Catherine Samary, Le Monde diplomatique [February 2000]

On 10 January the main Serbian opposition groups reached an agreement to hold joint demonstrations, starting in March, in favour of an early general election. In the event of victory, they intend to form a coalition government committed to mending fences with the West, ensuring equality between Serbia and Montenegro in the Yugoslav Federation, restoring the rights of the national communities and implementing the reforms required by the Balkan stability pact. In Kosovo, the opposition's declared aim is ethnic reconciliation, but it is demanding the return of the Yugoslav army to the province. Nato's war has provoked a widespread Iraqi syndrome in Serbia and it is by no means certain that the opposition's new-found unity will suffice to topple Slobodan Milosevic.

We have a tragic past and our present is even more tragic. Luckily, we have no future. Thus runs a popular joke in Serbia, where irony eases the tensions of everyday existence (1). When it comes to culture, a dose of humour is more than necessary. The French and US cultural centres, gutted and covered with graffiti calling for revenge, stand unrepaired slap in the middle of Belgrade's central shopping area. The charred hulks of government buildings and TV stations remind you that the bombing could be deadly accurate.

The snow-covered streets of the capital glisten under the Christmas and New Year illuminations. But the queues for sugar and oil, which had disappeared during the war, are beginning to form once again. Shop windows are well stocked and often quite stylish, but living standards have dropped by an estimated 40% in a year (2). Inflation is running at 150%. For those who still have a job, wages are abysmally low (3) and often not paid at all.

And yet President Milosevic is still in power. Last June he was condemned by his far-right ally Vojislav Seselj for caving in to Nato. At a mass meeting of the opposition on 19 August Bishop Anastasije Rakita, the emissary of Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Pavle, described him as absolute evil and demanded his resignation. His demise seemed imminent.

At the same meeting, however, large rifts appeared in the opposition. Apart from personal ambitions, two conflicting strategies emerged, based on different assessments of popular reaction to Western policies. Vuk Draskovic's Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) argued that it was unrealistic to make Milosevic's departure a condition for taking part in the elections. If its partners disagreed, it was prepared to go it alone. The Alliance for Change (SZP), led by Zoran Djindjic's Democratic Party (DS) and supported by the US, took the opposite view and called for demonstrations to demand Milosevic's resignation. But the large demonstrations of the summer withered away in the autumn. Then came a symbolic, highly controversial turnabout by the church. On 29 November Patriarch Pavle attended the celebrations commemorating the birth of the republic alongside Milosevic, who was still president of Yugoslavia. It is tempting to despair at such contradictions and dismiss the Serbs as politically incompetent (4). Indeed, in their attempts to justify the bombing, some commentators barely hesitated to lump all Serbs together as savages and fascists.

But the fact remains that Milosevic's position has been considerably strengthened by Western policy—before, during and since the war. It is by no means certain that he will lose the elections nor that demands for his resignation or his arraignment before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) will win his opponents votes. Meanwhile, some accommodation with the authorities may give opposition parties more air time on state-run TV channels. The SPO's wavering partly reflects opportunism (5) but it also shows where the real power lies.

If criticism of Western policies is popular, it is mainly because they are widely and rightly perceived as hypocritical and unfair - especially when they are pursued in the name of justice. The ICTY was created for and by Mrs Albright with private-sector funding, says SPO advisor Dragoslav Simic. The International Criminal Court established by the Rome Statute would have the necessary legitimacy to judge crimes in accordance with universal principles. But that is precisely what the US refuses to accept. At the time of the Rambouillet conference there was not much to choose between Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman, in terms of crimes committed and respect for democracy (6). And, needless to say, comparison of the number of victims in Chechnya and Kosovo strengthens popular support for the official propaganda.

The recent attribution of federal ministries to members of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) marks the continuation of an alliance and a strategy. Yesterday that strategy consisted in taking advantage of the Nato bombing to slice up Kosovo along ethnic lines and establish Serbian domination of the province with the aid of fascist paramilitary groups. Tomorrow it could lead to a coup d'état in Montenegro, justified on grounds of Western interference in the republic's internal affairs.

Although the Socialist Party is less nationalistic than its main opponents, who have accused it of betraying Greater Serbia (7), it peddles a centralist, unitary version of Yugoslavia dominated by the Serbian majority. That is why it chose to disrupt the delicate checks and balances of Tito's Yugoslavia, first and foremost in Kosovo, and adopted much of the Serbian nationalists' anti-communist programme and ideology. Symbolic changes in street names are highly revealing in this respect. It was the socialist government, not the opposition, that renamed Marshal Tito Avenue Avenue of the Serbian Lords (8).

The relative stability of the Milosevic regime despite its failures rests on an ability to absorb part of the programmes of its leftwing and rightwing opponents, and on a combination of social protection, mafia links and political patronage. It is also a side effect—collateral damage, so to speak—of the policies pursued by the great powers. The odds are stacked against us, says Branislav Jovanovic, the SPO leader of the Nis city council, where the Zajedno coalition has maintained its unity since winning control in 1996. Apart from the effects of international sanctions, the civilian population has suffered considerably from the Nato bombing. Four hundred shells and several fragmentation bombs hit markets, bridges, working-class districts near the hospital, and a sports centre.

The opposition has barely overcome its chagrin at the outcome of December's meeting with US government and EU representatives in Berlin, which the independent press described as a fiasco (9). It was the follow-up to a first meeting in Luxembourg which part of the opposition had boycotted in angry response to the conditions imposed. In Berlin the aim had been to set up a tripartite commission of US, EU and Serbian opposition representatives that would be more responsive to the opposition's views and aware of its internal divisions. But despite this, the opposition's unanimous demand for sanctions to be lifted did not figure in the final resolution.

The German foreign minister Joschka Fischer, who was the EU's representative in Berlin, apparently gave all sides two months in which to reach agreement. In the event, only a month was needed. On 10 January the Serbian opposition parties signed a joint programme for a coalition government and agreed to hold joint mass meetings calling for early elections.

Predrag Simic, an SPO advisor to Draskovic, emphasises that the opposition won its only victory in 1996—that is, in peacetime, after sanctions had been lifted and the situation had returned to normal (10). Commenting on the Berlin meeting, which he attended, he admits the outcome could have been worse. Nevertheless, we obtained nothing specific, not even extension of the Energy for Democracy programme, which we support although we have moral objections to the selective supply of European oil to opposition-held cities. Aid should go to the whole of Serbia.

No doubt they do have moral objections. But the SZP, led by Djindjic, was mainly out to prove it could secure material aid for the population through its external alliances. That is why we finally agreed to a pilot project to supply oil to Nis and Pirot, both of which are controlled by the opposition. The idea was that aid would subsequently be supplied to the whole country. But the EU cannot even maintain its programme for those two cities.

The DS leader in Nis, Zoran Zivkovic, complains that only 2.3% of the promised aid had arrived by the end of December, and only after being blocked for two weeks on the Macedonian border. Sladjana Stamenkovic, a federal MP and head of the local JUL (11), is openly sarcastic: The heating oil was imported by a private company which omitted to declare it as humanitarian aid and kept 3% of the shipment for itself. The head of the company was sentenced to five years' imprisonment as a war profiteer. A not entirely disingenuous comment, bearing in mind that her party punishes or promotes war profiteers according to whether they toe the government line. Nis has received three days' worth of oil so far, she continues, and less than a third of the local population uses oil for heating. We are told the programme will be extended to the whole country. When, may I ask? In March? It's not aid we need. We just need to be allowed to function normally.

Predrag Simic has no illusions. The Berlin meeting gave us nothing, so the regime can continue to make mileage out of sanctions. 'Look,' it says, 'the opposition has nothing to offer you, whereas Russia has given us gas for the whole winter and China has lent us $300m'.

A similar battle is going on over the rebuilding of bridges. Here again the opposition has tried to obtain aid from abroad, which the government has done its best to block. We secured a German donation of $150,000, but it never reached us, says Branislav Jovanovic. As a result, a bridge destroyed in Nis was rebuilt by the government and reopened in a special ceremony by the president of the Republic of Serbia, Milan Milutinovic. The same thing happened in Novi Sad, another city held by the opposition, where three bridges had been destroyed. In June 1999 Nenad Canak, leader of the Social Democratic League of Vojvodina (LSV), obtained the donation of a dismountable footbridge from Vienna. All that remained was to pay for its installation. If the international community wants to help us, said Canak, it should not only point the finger at the bad guys but also let the Serbian people know who the good guys are, so they understand that being a good guy pays off (12). Needless to say, his opportunistic attitude to democracy did not do much for the opposition's public image.

Day after day the state-run television channels triumphantly proclaim the progress of reconstruction work carried out by the state, both in the regime's own strongholds and in cities controlled by the opposition. The first phase - which covered housing stock, the electric power grid and city bridges—was declared completed in December. But the hardest work - on refineries, factories, public buildings and the long bridges over the Danube—has yet to be done.

In 1996 a group of 17 opposition economists was formed to draw up an economic programme for the Zajedno coalition. Dubbed G 17, the group is coordinated by Mladjan Dinkic, a young professor at Belgrade University. Last June it published an assessment of the damage caused by the bombing campaign (13) with a view to securing reparations from Nato. In October it established a nationwide network of opposition experts known as the G 17 Plus Association. Dinkic thinks Milosevic could be beaten if we could show ourselves capable of acting now on basic everyday issues. He would like to see Yugoslavia join the Balkan stability pact in order to stimulate economic reform, as in Montenegro. We are looking to involve all Yugoslav economists who are working in or with the World Bank, the IMF, German financial institutions, and similar organisations, says Dinkic, who sees privatisation as the key to further progress. In terms of growing unemployment and poverty, we have already paid the price for the transition to a market economy without any of the benefits, he claims. We should, however, keep our excellent public health system. But we should try to secure international funding for it, he adds as a somewhat naive afterthought.

The same type of free-market philanthropy is reflected in the slogan of the Nezavisnost independent trade union federation Privatisation against theft. While criticism of the Serbian regime's mafia links is popular, the general public seems less receptive to the free-market slogans that accompany it. Caught between the frying pan and the fire, it resists as best it can. Western values hit Serbia like a bombshell—literally, is the sad comment from Srbjanka Tureljic, an electronic engineer who formerly chaired her university council. She was sacked last July. About 150 of us out of 6,000 refused to sign the new contract of allegiance to the regime that was being imposed on us (14). Tureljic is coordinator of the Alternative Academic Educational Network (15), whose aim is to show that resistance is possible.

In the judicial system, too, repression is the order of the day. In December the Serbian Assembly dismissed three judges—including Supreme Court judge Barovic and Slobodan Vucetic, a member of the Serbian Constitutional Court —who belonged to the Association of Independent Judges. The regime is clearly out to dismantle the association and prevent its members from participating in G 17 Plus, which provides the opposition with the services of hundreds of intellectuals.

Barovic's wife, Borka Pavicevic, is the director of the Centre for Cultural Decontamination (16). She and Ana Miljanic run it in the historic Veljkovic Pavilion, which they have renovated. Over the last five years they have organised more than 700 events, mostly plays and concerts, to try and stimulate political debates around free art, despite the impossible conditions.

On 18 December last the Centre organised a debate on the trial of Flora Brovina, a 50-year-old child psychiatrist and poet who founded the League of Albanian Women in Kosovo. She was arrested in Pristina on 20 April and sentenced in early December to 12 years' imprisonment for terrorism. Miljanic and Pavicevic issued an appeal for her release which was broadcast by the independent radio station B-92. Brovina's husband, Arji Begu, joined in the appeal. It is a strange situation that proves the nature of the regime defies simple definition. Is it conceivable, for example, that the French government would have tolerated public demonstrations of solidarity with FLN terrorists during the Algerian war? Despite this apparent contradiction, 2,000 Kosovar Albanians are still languishing in Serbian gaols, often without trial.

The end is near, but not yet in sight, ran the headline to the December leader of the opposition newspaper Republika (17). The subtitle was Free elections or civil war. According to sociologist Mladen Lazic, recent opinion polls show less than 20% support for the parties in power. But they are still in front because the opposition is divided. The support of the great mass of the rural population and the least qualified and poorest urban workers goes either to the Socialist Party or the far right. But over 40% of the population do not know who to vote for. Despite this uncertainty, over 60% see their future as bound up with Europe, rather than Russia or China, but they also want the country to pursue a 'Yugoslavian road' to development.

Notes

(1) The regime's humour concentrates on proving the opposition has sold out to foreign interests, particularly the US. In response to an opposition poster showing President Milosevic and his wife crossed out in black, with the slogan Narod se pita! (The people must decide), the government has brought out a poster showing the opposition leaders together with Madeleine Albright. The slogan reads Madeleine must decide.

(2) Per capita GDP, almost $3,000 in 1989, had fallen to about $1,600 by 1998 (though with a slight resumption of growth of 4% a year in the last three years). The estimated figure for 1999 is $970.

(3) A teacher earns from $40 to $100 a month—the price of a pair of shoes or the rent for a small flat.

(4) For a detailed analysis of the regime and Yugoslav society, see two outstanding studies edited by Mladen Lazic: Society in crisis : Yugoslavia in the early '90s, Filip Visnjic, Belgrade, 1995, and Protest in Belgrade : Winter of discontent, Central European University Press, Budapest, 1999.

(5) Since the break-up of the Zjedno coalition, the SPO can govern Belgrade only with the help of votes from Milosevic's Socialist Party and Seselj's Radical Party.

(6) Florence Hartmann's remarkable book, Milosevic : la diagonale du fou, Denoël, Paris, 1999, confirms that the ethnic dismemberment of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina was largely a joint enterprise by Milosevic and Tudjman.

(7) See Jean-Arnault Dérens, Rude awakening for the orphans of Greater Serbia, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, November 1997.

(8) On taking over leadership of the city council the SPO, which advocates the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, renamed it King Milan Avenue.

(9) See the independent Serbian daily Blic, Belgrade, 2 December 1999.

(10) Following the Dayton Accords of December 1995 and the establishment of normal relations between the FRY, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, sanctions against Belgrade were lifted. At the end of 1996 the opposition, united in the Zajedno coalition, won a majority in the large cities. Three months of demonstrations were needed before the regime accepted the results.

(11) The JUL was founded in 1993 by Milosevic's wife, Mirjana Markovic. It supports the Socialist Party in exchange for political patronage. Since the end of the war it has consolidated its participation in the federal government by forming a patriotic union with Seselj's Radical Party.

(12) See Libération, 28 June 1999 and Le Monde, 18 July 1999.

(13) Mladjan Dinkic (ed.), G17 Final Account, Stubovi Kulture, Belgrade, 1999.

(14) See Thomas Hofnung, Make or break for Serb regime, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, April 1999.

(15) Alternative Academic Educational Network, Masarikova 5/XVI, Belgrade. E-mail address: aaen@Eunet.yu

(16) CZKD, Bircuninova 21, Belgrade. Tel/Fax 681-422.

(17) Republika, Belgrade, 6-31 December 1999.