full article http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/THU/IN/revenge.2.html Paris, Thursday, October 12, 2000 Across Yugoslavia, the Once-Powerful Get the 'Milosevic Treatment' By R. Jeffrey Smith and Peter Finn Washington Post Service BELGRADE - It is not often that low-level employees in large institutions get to dictate the wording of resignation notes for the boss to sign. But this is common in the newly democratic Yugoslavia, where high and mighty people are being kicked out by their subordinates. The fall of President Slobodan Milosevic last weekend has triggered an astonishing spate of citizens' revenge across the country, as people target their bosses in spontaneous retaliation for years of government abuse. Sometimes the anger degenerates into violence. >From the southern city of Leskovac, where a mob burned the home of a pistol-waving Socialist Party official last week, to the central Danube River city of Smederevo, where a group of angry physicians showed a formerly well-connected hospital director the door Tuesday, allies of the old government are getting their comeuppances en masse. Leading the purge are people like Slavica Simonovic, who manages a fleet of luxury cars for one of Yugoslavia's largest corporations but gets paid a pittance; Jovan Trnic, a longtime administrator at a huge prison complex, and Dr. Slobodanka Stajevic, a pediatrician at a decrepit hospital. The new president, Vojislav Kostunica, is worried the trend might get out of hand. Like citizens' justice anywhere, Yugoslavia's version is bound to be afflicting the innocent at times as well as the guilty. Jeers for the Departing Chairman Radoman Bozovic, a Milosevic insider and chairman of the huge Genex Group, found out he was in trouble Monday when he strode into the lobby of Belgrade's Intercontinental Hotel, which Genex owns. There, Mrs. Simonovic, a 20-year employee and manager of the fleet of 80 luxury vehicles, was waiting. She strode up and told him flatly that he had to quit. He responded that he did not know her, ignored her demand and walked past her into the hotel. But that did not solve his problem - hundreds of whistling and jeering Genex employees were waiting in the lobby. Genex was once one of the most successful companies in Yugoslavia, a conglomerate trading in glass, electronics, textiles, tourism, petroleum, aviation, pharmaceuticals and other products. It had $6 billion in annual sales and a work force of 5,800. Like other major Yugoslav enterprises, it was ''socially owned,'' a peculiar capitalist-Communist concept in which shares were allotted to workers. ''It was a great company,'' Mrs. Simonovic said. In the old days, the company was a cash cow in Yugoslavia's developing economy. But then came Mr. Milosevic. Shortly after becoming president of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic, in 1989, he appointed his own men as deputy managers. Later, he abolished its board of directors in favor of a single manager, whom he selected. Mr. Bozovic, a former Serbian prime minister, took over the company in March 1999 - on the first day of the bombing of Yugoslavia by members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization during the Kosovo crisis - and promptly began selling some key assets and laying off workers.
