** Yugoslav Parliament to Choose New Prime Minister and Cabinet on
Tuesday, July 24
*** A Temporary Government
Could Ranko Krivokapic, the vice-president of the Socialist Democratic
Party, be right in saying that Dragan Pesic will be Yugoslavia's last
prime minister, with a shorter term than his predecessor?
AIM Belgrade, July 20, 2001
On July 17, when Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica announced Dragan
Pesic's appointment as the new prime minister designate, he said
something peculiar: "The shorter this government lasts, the greater its
success!"
Kostunica said this adding that one of the new coalition government's
basic goals would be to redefine relations between the republics that
constitute the Yugoslav federation. The new government is made up of the
ruling Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) and the opposition
Montenegrin Together for Yugoslavia bloc. In saying this, Kostunica was
thinking of a new Yugoslav constitution that should precede federal
elections, which the DOS pledged to hold before coming to power in
Serbia.
Cynics, however, could interpret "redefining relations in the
federation" differently and say that Dragan Pesic's team had completed
this task even before officially being chosen on July 24. Pesic is an
economist in Podgorica and a member of the Socialist People's Party's
(SNP) leadership. The Socialist People's Party is the biggest party in
the For Yugoslavia coalition. Less than three weeks after former prime
minister Zoran Zizic resigned, the other republic in the federation,
Serbia, has skirted on the edge of repudiating the federal government,
similar to Montenegro, which does not acknowledge it. "It is not a
government that is supposed to govern," said Serbian Premier Zoran
Djindjic, who, as of recently, has not missed a single opportunity to
invite Montenegro to hold a referendum on independence by the end of the
year.
The Montenegrin referendum was announced for March next year. Unless
something like Zoran Zizic's resignation happens again, which came at a
time when Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus was trying to ensure as
much funding as possible at a donors' conference for Yugoslavia, thus
jeopardizing Labus's position at the conference, maybe Pesic's
government will, by amending the constitution, manage to achieve one of
its most important tasks by then. Namely, it might succeed in
negotiating the reprogramming and writing off of Yugoslavia's debts to
the London and Paris clubs. Both republics would benefit from this,
regardless of where they plan to go in the future.
Despite the Socialist People's Party's attempts to do away with Labus as
a key negotiator in this, Labus, judged by many the most successful
member of the government, succeeded in keeping his seat in the new
cabinet. Another important international negotiator, member of the
former government and president of the Civic Alliance of Serbia, Goran
Svilanovic, will also stay at his post as foreign minister in the new
government. Jovan Rankovic, a member of the Democratic Party of Serbia
(DSS) is being mentioned as a likely candidate for finance minister.
Zoran Zivkovic will also be representing Serbia in the new, reduced
government. Zivkovic is vice-president of Djindjic's Democratic Party,
and will probably retain his post as interior minister. Also
representing Serbia will be Rasim Ljajic, the leader of the Sandzak
coalition, as minister of minorities once again.
The remaining four portfolios and prime minister's office went to
Montenegro, and were divided as follows: two went to the Socialist
People's Party and one to the People's Party (NP) and Serb People's
Party each (SNS). According to unconfirmed reports, Slobodan Krapovic
(Socialist People's Party), the minister of defense in the former
cabinet, will also retain his post, and Bozidar Milosevic, a fellow
party member and director of the Niksic steel mill, will be appointed
minister of transportation and telecommunications. In the former
government, Zoran Sami (Democratic Party of Serbia) and Boris Tadic
(Democratic Party) were in charge of these ministries which now
constitute a single ministry. Petar Trojanovic (Serb People's Party),
who was aide to the minister of trade in Zizic's cabinet, will probably
be placed in charge of the ministry of agriculture and domestic trade in
the new cabinet. That leaves the ministry of justice for the People's
Party; Savo Djurdjevac is a likely candidate.
No one seemed to care when the makeup of the new cabinet was announced,
as if in support of the cynical viewpoint that the new government will
administer the smallest territory in Europe - the Federation Palace
building in New Belgrade. Only Vladan Batic, the Serbian justice
minister and president of the Democratic Christian Party of Serbia, said
of the government that, "personal stances are not important," because
the "government is transitional."
The term, "transitional government," is justified not only by the
announced constitutional amendments and elections that are to follow, or
the referendum on independence in Montenegro. Calls for a referendum in
Serbia are growing in number. Zoran Zivkovic (Democratic Party), Vladan
Batic (Democratic Christian Party), and representatives of the New
Democracy party have so far publicly endorsed the holding of such a
referendum. Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia, on the other hand,
said talking about a referendum in Serbia only added to the tensions and
recalled that the DOS did not win elections in Serbia by advocating
independence.
Some observers are saying that this does not necessarily imply a serious
threat to the cabinet's existence. Serbia provides for the federal
budget, and hence the wages of the federal government. According to
these observers, the talk on a referendum in Serbia is not an authentic
wish by Serbia for a federal divorce, but is in fact a reflection of the
power struggle in the ruling Serbian coalition, an attempt to
"undermine" President Kostunica by the part of the DOS that supports
Premier Djindjic.
Public opinion polls, however, show that the number of people in Serbia
who are irritated by the tug-of-war between Serbia and Montenegro is
rising. One of the latest such surveys, conducted by the Institute for
Social Studies from Belgrade in July, showed that 59 percent of the
respondents wanted Yugoslavia to stay intact, which is almost ten
percent less than in March this year. In the same period, the number of
people endorsing an independent Serbian state increased from 18 to 29
percent. The fact that an opposite trend was recorded in Montenegro,
Serbia's tiny sister republic, for the first time, with the number of
people supporting a joint state increasing and the number of
independence supporters decreasing, is not very encouraging for
pro-federation advocates, Zoran Lutovac, a researcher at the institute,
said. Lutovac believes that the increase in pro-federalists is a result
of the clashes between the DOS and Socialist People's Party, in which
the Socialist People's Party improved its image and became a political
player.
Misa Djurkovic, an associate and researcher at the Institute for
European Studies, believes that the conflict between the coalition
partners in the federation government has a much more profound effect
than merely changing people's opinion, which no one has cared to consult
on this issue. He says that the agreement on the new Yugoslav government
has gone a step further in discrediting the federal government.
"The number of ministries has been cut, the rule book for the government
to be assembled according to the coalition agreement is also
unconstitutional, because it introduces radical confederal elements:
equal representation of republics in the government and an equal say in
decisions, veto rights for the prime minister or deputy prime minister
who are from different republics," Djurkovic said.
"All of this was requested by the Socialist People's Party which
allegedly endorses the joint state, but it is in fact the result of the
DOS's (which also endorses federation on an equal footing) stance
towards the Montenegrins during the crisis surrounding former Yugoslav
president Slobodan Milosevic's extradition to the international war
crimes tribunal," Djurkovic said. He added that, "all of the things that
the ruling Montenegrin Democratic Party of Socialists is always citing
as proof of the impossibility of a future joint state, were resorted to
when Milosevic was extradited."
Dragan Pesic's appointment as prime minister designate has given the
separatist Democratic Party of Socialists one more argument. Democratic
Party of Socialists senior official Miodrag Vukovic gloatingly said that
even the pro-Yugoslav Socialist People's Party had acknowledged that the
federation no longer existed: "The fact that none of the leaders of the
Socialist People's Party accepted to be prime minister shows that the
party is aware that Yugoslavia no longer exists, that in this
Yugoslavia, at the federal level, which Djindjic likes to describe as a
double expense, nothing but a farce can happen, as we ourselves said in
the past several days and months," Vukovic said.
Ranko Krivokapic, the vice-president of the Social Democratic Party of
Montenegro, the Democratic Party of Socialists' coalition partner,
agreed with Vukovic, saying that those participating in creating the new
federal government "are pretending to be the government of a state that
has no borders, government, people, or federal units."
"If anything is interesting in all of this at all, then it is that Pesic
will have a shorter term of office than his predecessor Zizic, but that
he will be remembered longer, because I am certain that he will be the
last, at least formal, prime minister designate of this Yugoslavia that
died long ago," Krivokapic said (Zizic's government took office in
November, last year).
Pesic's coalition partners demonstrated an equal lack of understanding:
Dragan Soc, the president of the People's Party, one of three members of
the coalition For Yugoslavia (along with the Socialist People's Party
and Bozidar Bojovic's Serb People's Party) was also disappointed with
the Socialist People's Party's decision to appoint someone not belonging
to party top circles.
Nebojsa Medojevic, an independent economist from Podgorica, also said
that this decision showed that the Socialist People's Party no longer
took Yugoslavia seriously. He said, "The election of Pesic, certainly
not a prominent figure in the Socialist People's Party, to the post of
the country's most important official," shows that the People's
Socialists' ostensible support of a joint state with Serbia "is
political propaganda for Montenegro's political scene, and that everyone
is getting ready for what is politically inevitable: two
internationally-recognized independent states, that will forge some sort
of alliance."
# Vera Didanovic
(AIM)
Serbian News Network - SNN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.antic.org/
