Dragan Tomic, The Speaker

by Nenad Lj. Stefanovic

When Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic was climbing to the top of authority in Serbia, one of the discarded revolutionary cadre said caustically, that the time had come when ``it was more important to have worked two years with ``Tehnogas'' (Milosevic`s former company), than to have spent four years in the revolution.''

Many remembered this story last week when Dragan Tomic was chosen Speaker of the Serbian Assembly. It was also added that the rubber factory ``Rekord'' from Rakovica was now the political trampoline from which one jumped to political heights. The current Yugoslav President, Zoran Lilic is a former Rekord man, as is the new Speaker who started off as an assistant engineer and went on to become the firm's General Manager after 25 years. Tomic could not resist the siren call of the communistcontrolled Socialist Alliance, and so became the President of the Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Belgrade.

It wasn't long before Milosevic picked on Tomic as the man who would help change the image of an unyielding policy and present it in the Assembly in a more flexible light. The previous Speaker, Zoran Arandjelovic, was not capable of adapting to the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) new needs.

Tomic said in an interview given a few days ago why Milosevic had chosen him. ``Milosevic believed that my equanimity and stability suited circumstances which called for political cooperation and agreements... Milosevic obviously thought my character fitted in with the need to reach compromise, because I am not a quarrelsome person, I don't belittle people or denigrate them.''

Some believe that this tendency towards compromise and placidity could have cost Tomic his career. There are others who think that it took him a long time to decide which side he would back at the crucial 8th session of the former League of Communists of Serbia.

Because of his conciliatory tone, the losers believed for a long time that Tomic was their man. In the end they claimed that he was not a man who took a long time to make up his mind, but one who had been planted amongst them with the task of pretending neutrality and a wish for compromise.

When the victors later strengthened their positions in Serbia and introduced a course of ruthless ``democracy,'' the cadre broom swept through every firm and village in the land. Dragan Tomic became the Director of ``Jugopetrol,'' and the uninitiated thought that he had definitely been dropped from the top team. Those better informed knew that only a loyal man would be allowed to head Serbia's oil industry. Tomic's biography tells us that he is President of the Alliance of Engineers and Technicians of Yugoslavia, Chairman of the Executive Board of the ``Politika'' television company and one of the few recipients of the order of ``Obilic,'' introduced by paramilitary leader and a suspected war criminal Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan.