The Big Transfer

Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) official and singer Dragoslav Pavle Aksentijevic resigned from the SPO Main Committee on September 5. He accused SPO leader Vuk Draskovic of "suffocating and ruining his own creation". September 4 saw the resignation of SPO vice-president and secretary-general Mihajlo Markovic, who said that the SPO presidency had adopted decisions which he, as the party's vice-president, could not uphold. Vladimir Gajic also resigned because he believes that the SPO has developed an "autocratic form of leadership". Both have remained members of the Main Committee and retained their deputy mandates.

Draskovic has criticized the media of turning the resignations into scandals. He said that the SPO was a big party and that new people were coming. SPO spokesman Milan Komnenic said that "searching for scandals in the SPO was the work of the war lobby in this country, which was trying very hard to make the SPO lose face". Vojislav Vukcevic has been named the new SPO secretary-general. He was one of the founders of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) in Eastern Slavonija and Western Srem, while former SPO candidate for Assembly Speaker Gvozden Rosic and deputy Aleksandar Cotric have been elected to the presidency. All of these men are of moderate political leanings.

Noisy departures are a part of opposition tradition and began with the splintering of the Democratic Party (DS) into the Serbian Liberal Party (SLS), the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), etc. In early summer Dragoslav Milicic resigned from the post of SPO vice-president; he was one of the party's main financiers. Milicic accused Danica Draskovic (Vuk's wife and top SPO official), her husband and their friends of using the party to amass personal wealth.

The DSS Savski Venac (Belgrade) community board poured oil on fire when it pointed out that "a mass usurpation of building lots" had taken place and that municipality officials "had started plundering the citizens' private property and were breaking into apartments". The DSS board called upon municipality president Nikola Adasevic and SPO board members to "urgently dismiss members who were abusing their office with the aim of acquiring personal gain and thus turning the SPO into a branch of the SPS (Socialist Party of Serbia) and compromising the party".

The Belgrade City Assembly immediately sent a public plea to all Belgrade communities to prevent such abuses, adding that the City Assembly had been right and farseeing when it had placed community property (mostly that of opposition-held communities) under its control. In the meantime, the SPO dissolved several of its community boards for opposing party policy or for abuse of office (Palilula, Smederevska Palanka, Pozarevac). This was linked to criticism of the SPO's support for the Contact-Group peace plan in Bosnia.

This spring Mladen Markov left the SPO noisily, urging a stronger nationalist option. The SPO was shaken rather seriously when Slobodan Raketic left, taking with him a group of federal deputies. In order to retain their mandates they later claimed that they were DEPOS (Democratic Movement of Serbia) deputies and not SPO. In the end they founded a party called DEPOS. The Serbian Radical Party (SRS) - SPS majority at the time did not support the SPO's demand for a change of mandates. It is interesting that all of these departures from the party were followed with accusations against Danica Draskovic for dominating party affairs, criticism that the SPO was conducting a "policy lacking in national feeling", that there was too much criticism of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic's leadership in Pale, and that the SPO was heading towards a civic option.

A month ago Ljubisa Rajic resigned as editor-in-chief of the paper "Republika" and wrote a critical text in which he criticized the Civic Alliance of Serbia's (GSS) rapprochement with DEPOS and the SPO, a loss of contact with the minority populations in Serbia, the ascendancy of the Liberal option over the Social Democratic one and the party's inclination towards one-man leadership. GSS vice-president Ratomir Tanic assessed the party's policy from the opposite side when he resigned from the post of GSS vice-president and left the party. Tanic cited the "absence of an inter-party consensus on key political issues", especially with regard to Serbian and Yugoslav national and state interests". Tanic was one of the founders of a new political institution called the Democratic Center.

Because of differences over the policy pursued by new DS President Zoran Djindjic (getting closer to Milosevic, flirting with Karadzic, Micunovic's dismissal), the following resigned from their posts in the DS in early March: Slobodan Vuckovic, Svetlana Knjazeva, Vida Ognjenovic, Milena Jaukovic, Dragan Domazet, Borka Bozovic and others. Of those who had remained with Djindjic, Radoje Djukic and Slobodan Radulovic said that they were leaving the DS because it was entering the government. Radulovic still hasn't given up his deputy mandate, in spite of a demand by the Statutory Board that he do so, and he hasn't been formally dismissed from the party.

After the last elections, practically all parties suffered from defections and in-fighting.

The Democratic Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians (DZVM) split when DZVM vice-president Sandor Hodi was asked to explain how 600,000 DEM in aid money from abroad had been spent. The clash resulted in the forming of the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians (SVM), presided over by Ferenc Cubele, formerly a DZVM deputy who said that he could no longer carry on a democratic dialogue with DZVM leader Andras Agoston and his followers. Some papers write that the Hungarian government's attempts at making peace between the two groups failed.

Former republican deputies Alija Mahmutovic and Rizah Gruda accused the Party of Democratic Action's (SDA) leader Sulejman Ugljanin of pushing the Sandzak Muslims into war and of spending party and aid money unchecked.

The Serbian National Renewal Party (SNO), led by Mirko Jovic, split into two parties with the same name.

At the last convention of the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo, the party founders fared poorly at the election of the party leadership; 60% of the new leadership was elected from new party activists, while former political prisoners fared somewhat better. Critics claim that the whole convention was reduced to a speech by Rugova; on the other hand, party veteran Fehmi Agani claims that Rugova has managed to keep his movement intact. The Belgrade daily "Vecernje Novosti" gave extensive coverage to the public quarrel between Rugova's Ambassador to Albania Anton Kollai and Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed Kosovo government in exile Bujar Bukoshi, who has been accused of usurping the fund for the financing of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo, and of "departing greatly from Rugova's idea of an independent Republic of Kosovo".

After the last two elections there were deputy transfers among the opposition: SDA deputy Mahmut Memic joined the DS; SPO deputy Srbislav Milovanov opted for the SRS and became one of the loudest warmongers in the Serbian Assembly; SPO deputy Dragan Jeftovic joined the DS; Mihajlo Kovac was elected as a Party of Yugoslavs deputy but joined the DS, and was later in the splinter group which broke off and founded the DSS.

All of these changes cannot compare to the present disintegration of old opposition political structures. These are sure signs that political life in Serbia has lost all impetus.

The SRS split in early January 1994; a group headed by SRS vice-president Ljubisa Petkovic left the party. Petkovic then founded the Radical Party of Serbia.

It is not clear if the Serbian Radicals have gained strength after Milosevic's break with Karadzic by attacking the Serbian President for abandoning his war policy. However, the same cannot be said of Djindjic's ambiguous DS or Vojislav Kostunica's anemic DSS, who, as the favorites of the Orthodox Church and the nationalist forces in the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU), are filling this vacancy.

And the SPS? It has disowned former Belgrade Mayor Slobodanka Gruden. Gruden was humiliated into returning a diamond necklace to private banker and wheeler-dealer Dafina Milanovic, who had given it to her in the first place. Other members of the Old Guard were rewarded with diplomatic posts.

There is talk that a showdown is approaching. The daily "Politika" speculates that top party cadre changes can be expected and that SPS General Secretary Milomir Minic will be replaced by the more aggressive Slobodan Jovanovic, current head of the Belgrade SPS committee, a "man whose rating with President Milosevic is going up".

Few officials have left the SPS during the war; two years ago, six deputies in the Serbian Assembly defected to the Social Democratic Party, which later split into two.

After the turnabout in Bosnia it is natural to expect the SPS to purge itself of the radical elements which have infiltrated its ranks. The SPS is a peculiar party; it is prepared to change its name, state ideology, war and peace policies, but it does not change its officials often. The scores change, but not the orchestra. It is the other parties which are instead riven with divisions.