KOSTUNICA VS. DJINDJIC: NO SHOWDOWN IN BELGRADE, by Srdja Trifkovic and Michael Stenton http://www.rockfordinstitute.org/News/Trifkovic/NewsST082901.htm http://www.rockfordinstitute.org/News/Trifkovic/News&Views.htm Wednesday, August 29, 2001 "Kostunica IS the democratic opposition--all that remains of it. He knows that to find the Serbian government guilty of criminal incompetence, corruption and communist-era sloveliness and sordid patronage is one thing, to be capable of doing much better is quite another." KOSTUNICA VS. DJINDJIC: NO SHOWDOWN IN BELGRADE by Srdja Trifkovic and Michael Stenton The latest chapter in the crisis-ridden relationship between President Vojislav Kostunica of Yugoslavia and Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic of Serbia was opened on August 3, when a retired State Security official by the name of Momir Gavrilovic visited the office of Dr. Kostunica to talk to his advisors about the links between the Serbian government and organized crime: that same evening he was murdered by three as yet unknown men. Two days later the facts of the case became public with an expose in the Belgrade daily "Blic." It quoted Kostunica's aides as saying that Gavrilovic had made certain disclosures about the corrupt practices of Djindjic and his cronies. The police, however, seemed more interested in forcing the paper's editor to name his sources than in finding Gavrlovic's killers. The editor refused; on August 9 President Kostunica confirmed the Blic story. A week later (August 17) Kostunica's party - Democratic Party of Serbia, Demokratska stranka Srbije, DSS--announced that it was quitting the Serbian government. It stated that Serbia's moral, economic and political crisis is largely a product of the current government, not its Socialist predecessor. When, on August 22, Kostunica declared that fresh elections "could be in the interest of the state" it seemed that the die was cast. "We must confront the failure to honor constitutionality and legality as well as appearance of serious corruption and crime," he stated--and it appeared that the President was finally striking back at Djindjic, the man who has been doing his best to undermine him for almost a year (see News & Views, August 10). "Better late than never," commented Kostunica's supporters, who were concerned that his inaction in the aftermath of Milosevic's abduction threatened his popularity and credibility. Most observers agreed that if Kostunica forced early elections the DSS would win--and most DOS scroungers who jumped on his bandwagon last year would be back in the political wilderness. By this time there was evidence of Djindjic's panic. The security service, which he controls, alleged that the late Gavrilovic was a mobster involved in smuggling, drug-running, murders and extortion. The objective was not to establish who had killed Gavrilovic but to discredit the victim, and - indirectly - -the President's office, but it backfired. Djindjic was reduced to claiming that attacks on him and his ministers were detrimental to his attempts to attract foreign investment. This was obviously lame, and it seemed that for all his political skill Djindjic was finally running out of options. At the last moment, he was saved by Kostunica, who declared on August 24 that he did not want to call "a vote of confidence" in the Serbian government after all, and that elections would have to wait until the new constitution was enacted. In the meantime -- Kostunica suggested--the responsibility of Djindjic's government for a number of allegations, including murders and corruption, should be established through a commission of inquiry. "With Gavrilovic's murder he was given all the rope he needed to hang Djindjic and his cronies, and he's thrown it away yet again," a Belgrade analyst friendly to Kostunica commented the following day. "How can a commission resolve anything when its key members would be the culprits themselves?" That there was not going to be a showdown in Belgrade after all was additionally confirmed by an inconclusive meeting of the ruling DOS coalition on August 27. DOS is full of holes and yet it will not sink; everything that ought to pull its members apart takes place--and yet they stay together. Why? In attempting to find an answer let us briefly consider the wit and wisdom of the amiable Mr. Milan Protic. The recently recalled Yugoslav ambassador to the United States denounced the methods and mentality of those in charge in Belgrade as unreconstructed and "communist." In one sense he was right: compared to the average Yugoslav diplomat, Protic was a master of modern communication. Yugoslav diplomacy was simply dreadful, and too much of the old dead wood has been retained. Unfortunately Protic assumed that communication was an end in itself and that being liked--in Washington--is the whole purpose of diplomatic action. His opinions and policies were one thing in Begrade and another in Washington; precisely because he is so modern he assumed that style must consume content. As he became hopelessly detached from the business of representing his government his removal became inevitable. But as he packed his bags he called his President the "last defender of Communism." The charge is unfair and curious in that Kostunica has not run foreign affairs as his own fiefdom: the maverick ambassador was tolerated for longer than was wise or necessary. But Protic sees that the President's procedural rectitude must be made a weakness--a sort of communist era conservatism--if it is not to remain a strength. This episode underlines that "communism" - -bureaucratic ossification pickled in the perennial Yugoslav search for political correctness - is the silent partner in every institution and every party in modern Serbia. No one will rule it without an alliance with some part of the ancient regime, without some admixture of the old mentality. The charge is almost axiomatically true of any Yugoslav senior official--except an ambassador in a foreign capital representing himself. There are genuine dilemmas. The security services were undoubtedly pretty competent but they once belonged to Slobo the Bad. Who are the useful experts and who are the dispensable crooks? As for Gavrilovic, we know because he is dead. When he provided Kostunica's aides with information about corruption in high places he was certainly not trying to back a winner against the losers. Everyone knows where the money is and whose star is rising. Gavrilovic died because he was dangerous, and because the Yugoslav president is not master in his own house--or should one say of his walls, ceilings, and telephones. Immediately after this murder Kostunica was attacked for attempting to construct a "parallel" power structure. Since the accusation is - unfortunately - -ludicrous, we can see what the policy is: to keep the president as a sort of national mascot with not much more daily authority than a constitutional monarch in Northern Europe. The police minister even suggested that the president had no business discussing the security service without his permission. His insolence shows just how far Serbia's political discourse remains from any sense of constitutional normality. We have arrived at a point at which the Serbian government is considered by the DSS to be so corrupt and pointless that they have withdrawn from it, and yet the DOS coalition remains and takes all the key decisions. The President is ignored, and grossly insulted when that is impossible, and yet he preserves the very institution--the Democratic Opposition of Serbia--that provides moral and political authority for a government he dislikes and the people who invent ever more lurid accusations against him. All Belgrade senses the imminence of an election that would spell the end of DOS, and yet Kostunica says that elections must await a new constitution and that the accusations made by Gavrilovic must be considered by institutions controlled by those against whom the accusations were made. Clearly, the Yugoslav president is a man in no hurry to transform his nominal position into an office of real power. One must hope that he has rejected elections in the same sense that he rejected mass demonstrations last September-October, although one cannot quite suppress the disturbing thought that he was as serious then as he may be now. What is he doing? In part he is being managed. He is kept busy and does not have the staff to do his job and avoid exhaustion. He is not a president in the French sense--nor yet, quite, in the opposite German sense. He is the Ombudsman of Serbia; Kostunica IS the democratic opposition--all that remains of it. He knows that to find the Serbian government guilty of criminal incompetence, corruption and communist-era sloveliness and sordid patronage is one thing, to be capable of doing much better is quite another. Kostunica, almost alone, keeps up some critical commentary on Western behavior in Macedonia. But what would his foreign policy be if he were free to choose one? Which of his ministers in a future DSS-led Serbian government would be free--or stay free--of the corrupting influences of the previous decade? Could he find the personnel to build for him a post-communist foreign service, a carefully-corrected security service, a new Army and, above all, an honest economic staff? Is Kostunica a man who simply does not want power? He behaves like a man who fears that his own party may be little better than their rivals. He senses that he represents something crucial for Serbia--parliamentary self-respect and intelligible politics--but, as an unbending pessimist, he knows that he cannot make this ideal into a form a government for today. Kostunica the prophet might like to repudiate the national debt and break with NATO altogether; Kostunica the president, and icon of an absurdly large coalition, can do neither. It is difficult for those who do not relish power for power's sake to wield it competently. Kostunica could already have trounced his opponents had he enjoyed the cut and thrust of politics, but he preferred to leave the direction of affairs to other hands, and then to offer dignified reproof of a dilute patriarchal kind. That this is the man's real character seems plain. This style may conceal a sort of wisdom--what Shakespeare called "method." Kostunica needs to believe that there is a clear, feasible alternative to what he dislikes before he dares to stretch his hand out for the power that might still be in his reach. Perhaps it is because he wants an alternative regime so much that he does not attempt it yet. He is close enough to power to recoil at the prospect of testing his prophetic virtue much further in the thieves' kitchen of political complexity. He offers guidance but does not really want to impose the sacrifices that significant statesmen draw upon on their people. Not for the moment, at least. How long can Serbia wait for Kostunica the politician? Will he ever discover the inner fire to burn away his gloomy view of what is possible? It may be that he is right to let confusion reign and to give Serbia time to learn exactly which politicians stand for what possibilities. Perhaps the time is not yet ripe for a DSS-Socialist alliance because the globalists are not yet the unqualified and abject failures they must become to justify such a reversal to the sort of honest folk who matter. On the other hand, media-control is a potent thing and in its new form may obscure what time ought to clarify. A national verdict against the Djindjic regime, which may exist today, may have dissipated in apathy and confusion twelve months hence. But the choice appears to be made. The Armani suits will continue to circulate around Belgrade in their expensive cars proclaiming their attachment to Euro-Atlantic values until the suits themselves are ready to risk the dissolution of DOS and elections. Meanwhile Kostunica will continue to make moderate but plausible criticism of what they do and who they have become. Whether the smart suits will ever force the President to choose between retirement and politics is anyone's guess. Time is not on Kostunica's side. Since his DSS is now a de facto opposition party, the protracted delay in breaking up DOS may in retrospect look like an investment. But the portents are bad. Serbia is a small country and personalities loom large while parties are easily dismissed as mere vehicles. Kostunica can still prophesy a far better polity, but he does not seem to offer a political package to his own party. He gives time and delphic advice, but not exactly leadership. He has decided what his limits are, perhaps also what they must be. We can only pray that the repudiation of an earthly kingdom for one man does not imply a heavenly translation for Serbia. Is Kostunica's sense of time and timing exactly what Serbia needs to pass through and beyond the triumphal Walpurgisnacht of the globalists--or is he the wisest fool in the Balkans? One thing seems clear: until there is a more convinced and convincing pposition, the case against destroying Djindjic will not appeal to Kostunica. But the abuse of his enemies is more intemperate by the day and their ambition may swamp even his patience. Copyright 2001, www.ChroniclesMagazine.org 928 N. Main St., Rockford, IL 61103 NSP Lista isprobava demokratiju u praksi ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?bUrBE8.bVKZIq Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: archive@jab.org T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
