Excommunicated From Life

Mionica is one of the smaller and, as things go here, less developed districts of Serbia. The town of Mionica, boasting a population of 2,000, has a church, a square with a monument to WW I Gen. Zivojin Misic, the District Hall and a police station leaning against the Hall. In Mionica the opposition is in power, while the ruling Serbian Socialist Party (SPS) is the opposition. A joke says that the police are ``leaning'' on the Town Hall, so the new authorities will never forget what state they are living in.

Life in Mionica is as elsewhere in Serbia. The living is difficult, but different because the coalition of opposition parties is doing what it set out to do, while the SPS, a minority party in the Assembly, cannot interfere in everyday life.

SPS local leader Tomislav Krstic proudly boasts that Mionica was the fourth among 25 districts of the Uzice electoral unit in the number of votes given to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. On the other hand, Mionica is the only district in which the united opposition ``routed'' the Socialists in the first round (29:16). It won because all the opposition parties united, except for the Serbian Radical Party. The locals say that there are no Radicals here, because the people `saw through' Seselj on time. After winning the elections, all opposition committee members swore in church that they would remain united no matter what results their parties had at the elections. And they have, at least up to now.

District Chairman Momir Rankovic (Serbian Renewal Movement) fears that the Republican authorities will interfere. He says this is particularly obvious with regard to the distribution of fuel and food. Mionica farmers got merely 48% of the fuel they needed for the harvest, while not one litre has come their way for the autumn sowing. Fuel is given only to those farmers in the Mionica District who voted for the SPS. District deputy Chairman Dragan Zivanovic (Democratic Party, DS) says the Republican authorities are punishing Mionica systematically.

Thanks to this situation, Mionica is virtually excommunicated from lifethe local public transportation is not working (highschool students are often forced to go to their schools in Valjevo on foot), the post office is closed more often than not, the daily press arrives irregularly, food supplies are disastrous. ``Decrees or regulations on protecting the standard of living are no good since we can't carry them out. Today, the Republican authorities sent a decree on the distribution of subsidised bread and milk for the endangered categories of the population, but we can't do a thing since it's impossible to buy them in the stores,'' says Executive Board Chairman Djuric.

In the circumstances, Mionica has turned to Districts suffering from the same fateTopola and Kosjeric. ``The only thing we managed to do was to cry our hearts out to each other,'' says Rankovic. The local authorities even appealed to their compatriots abroad, but all they got were promises.