UNMIK ON AIR

15 July 2003

SERBIA AFTER DJINDJIC

By Zoran CULAFIC

Hello and welcome to this edition of UNMIK on Air with Hysni Recica and Martin Redi

After ten years of historically tumultuous political and social stands, Serbia was strongly hit once again last March when Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was assassinated in front of his office in the center of Belgrade.

Many agree that Serbia’s authorities reacted with welcomed but unexpected determination and succeeded in stabilizing the political situation, not allowing old political options from the Milosevic’s regime to take advantage of the political moment and swim to the surface.

Biljana Kovacevic-Vuco is head of Belgrade’s based Yugoslav Lawyers committee for Human Rights (YUCOM), on a telephone interview she explained that though after PM Djindjc’s death there were some breaches of Human rights, still huge steps in consolidating and continuing the political and economical reforms have been made indeed.

Biljana Kovacevic-Vuco: I think that “Operation Sword” was successful in the sense that it addressed essential issues, i.e. the cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, in the sense of changing the system of values which existed till then. Before that we had false patriotism as a dominant issue. After “Sword” this false patriotism got its real name, and anti-Hague lobby became the bad guy.

But still, many agree that Belgrade’s dominant political parties -Democratic party first on line- have been reluctant in taking serious steps towards promoting the overall reforms that the late premier Djindjc himself was struggling for.

Nebojsa Medojevic, head of the Podgorica based NGO “Center for democratic transition”, believes that in Belgrade some lessons have not been learned yet.

Nebojsa Medojevic: Instead of reaching the broadest political consensus of all democratic and reformist political forces, we’ve witnessed that some political closed circles formed inside the Democratic and other DOS parties; attempting to use, or rather misuse the assassination (of PM Djindjic) as a “political cleansing excuse” to enforce their own regime. That is disputable from the aspect of democracy and the rule of law.

Medojevic claims that, after October 5^th 2000, the new democratic authorities in Belgrade committed the mistake of establishing close links with centers of financial power of the former Milosevic regime, known today as centers of organized crime.

Nebojsa Medojevic: The marriage between high-level politicians, huge finance centers and top-level criminals was not broken off after October 2000. The new authorities continued to use the same methods of ruling and same methods of (illegal) accumulation of wealth as during the Milosevic’s regime. It imperiled the trust in the Government, but it strengthened also the old Milosevic’s structures; legalizing old positions, dirty money and criminal activities.

Biljana Kovacevic-Vuco stresses the importance of being realistic. The only significant financial capital in Serbia is concentrated indeed in the centers of power that belonged to the Milosevic’s regime, and every authority must face that reality and find the way to deal with it:

Biljana Kovacevic-Vuc: These are common issues in countries in transition, I do not want to justify anything, but what other capital, except that one do we have? As I see it, now we are in the process of legalizing that capital, I’d call it a kind of “new deal’. Well if we’re living in a society, which was criminalized at such level, we can’t expect to behave in this country in a exemplary way for other democratic societies.

Biljana Kovacevic-Vuc: We have to bear in mind that everything here, in Milosevic’s time was punishable by Criminal law, starting with dealing foreign currency in the streets and everything else. What we have to do now is indeed the decriminalization process, but we can’t behave as though we never lived in a sewer (system) the last ten years. You cannot live in a sewer ten years and still stay clean. That’s an essential message.

Nebojsa Roncevic a re-known Belgrade critic and writer agrees that more must be done in encouraging the democratic processes, but he believes that the Milosevic era is definitely written in history. People are slowly becoming aware of what happened to all of them in the region.

Nebojsa Roncevic: And the fact that, like Legija and his comrades were war heroes, shows everyone what kind of war it was indeed. And now they betrayed each other, sold each other -Legija is offering Karadzic and Mladic to the Hague- I believe that no one will vote for that option any more. Even the most illiterate followers, I think, can’t remember without being disgusted the context they belonged to, and about their own blindness.

Slowly sometimes, but surely mostly always, justice catches up and Serbia is no different than so many other countries in this respect. The hope we are left with is that people will learn from experience and won’t allow the past to repeat itself.

And that was all for this edition of UNMIK on Air. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for more.