The Camera Recalls Scandal

The trouble with the serial began with the episode aired on January 31 (March 9, 1991 demonstrations in Belgrade). It included a taped phone call between then army chief of staff general Blagoje Adzic and Serbian police minister Radmilo Bogdanovic. Adzic informed Bogdanovic, who left a government session, of tank column movements and the need to "get all your forces into action once the army appears". Adzic also told column commander general Aleksandar Spirovski to "deal with that scum like the police do".

There was a persistent rumor that Bogdanovic said the serial was a "political failure". Just as persistently he refused to comment except to say he hadn't seen it.

Unlike previous episodes this one didn't get a rerun. The next one featured tapes of a joint session of the former Yugoslav state presidency as commander in chief and the army supreme command on March 12, 14 and 15, 1991. On behalf of the general staff, Veljko Kadijevic suggested that the collective supreme commander should impose a state of emergency in the country, allow the army to increase its peacetime combat readiness to prevent a possible civil war and possible outside intervention and secure conditions for the population to peacefully decide the future of the country, disarm paramilitary formations, continue political talks immediately and organize a referendum in each of the republics that want to secede, and finally adopt a new constitution, hold multi-party elections, constitute ruling bodies and direct the country's development towards a parliamentary multi-party democracy.

In short, the army was demanding what the politicians should have been calling for while the politicians opted for civil war.

The episode about the start of the war was never aired although state owned Borba included it in its TV listings (Slovenians shooting at the army).

In the meantime, some of the dissatisfied spoke up. Bosko Todorovic and Dusan Vilic, retired officers now publicists and authors of what they claim is the script for the serial, were loudest. They first told Politika Ekspres that "author Svetolik Mitic did not stick to our synopsis strictly and did a lot of editing". They added that "the serial will be continued only if the editing is taken over by someone else".

A week later, on February 24, Intervju reported that "the authors of the serial have taken all the material from the state TV because they were dissatisfied with Mitic". It added that the serial, if it continues, won't include army videos that were never aired before. And all that despite promises by state TV foreign broadcast desk director Miodrag Ilic that the next episode will be shown next Monday.

That announcement is not a sure thing. The round table did not feature state TV director Milorad Vucelic. Professional doubters said he and Ilic want to become diplomats soon.

So the serial has been stopped. Why? There are many possible answers.

Some are trying hard to remember when they talked to the police, army and why and when those tapes will be made public. There are a lot of others who haven't given up on shouting: "treason!" (in the army, of course). So far, the episodes aired to date cast some doubt on that theory but also turns the circle of "traitors" to an unexpected side.