Cliques that would be glad to see Avramovic's back

1. Top administration circles, whose power and competence have for long been based on managing the "social model of uncovered consumption," will soon begin to object the "hard budget restrictions."

2. The war lobby which sees Avranovic's program as another ingenious maneuver orchestrated by Milosevic's headquarters. But this time, the hard Yugoslav currency will discipline Karadzic, Mladic and Martic better than any of the "night sessions in Pale." Unless Avramovic meets the fate of Mitsotakis or Cosic.

3. Nationalist and patriotic opposition parties are openly attacking Avramovic's program, aware that the curbed hyper-inflation will necessarily direct the energy of political conflicts back to the issue of expensive national strategy, national goals and national self-centeredness.

4. About one million workers are awaiting with anxiety to see the effects of Avramovic's social plan which is to shift their payments to the state welfare funds until they are retrained for other jobs or for what they used to be - poor peasants.

5. The hard national currency makes the job easier for the money apparatus, but at the same time prevents its corruption. Top officials will lose considerable amounts earned from commissions and "gain shares" in deals with their relatives, godfathers, and companions of all kinds... Clerks behind the counters of the National Bank, the Money Transactions Service, commercial banks, PTT Savings Department will lose their "tips" - bottles of whiskey, packets of cigarettes and return favours.

6. The fixed exchange rate of hard currencies will raise the costs of life for some 100,000 foreign exchange pensioners and over one million people supported by some 500,000 Yugoslavs working abroad. Especially in Kosovo where 120,000 ethnic Albanians working abroad support nearly two million relatives back home.

7. The firm dinar and real tax burdens will put enormous pressure on people owing the non-profit property, which will further lead to a new wave of the social and ownership restructuring. The middle class, naively hoping that its decline is only temporary, will have to face the fact that under the new regime its fall is definitive.