The Appeal of the Serbian Intellectuals

The crude manipulation of the Serbian public could not have kept these facts hidden for very long. His despise and arrogance towards everyone, including his own people culminated during the events of March 9, when Slobodan Milosevic authorized the use of force against the Serbian people, including the bloody clashes with the police which resulted in numerous arrests.

Since he failed in his attempt to make the army introduce a state of emergency which would only serve for the preservation of his personal power, Milosevic decided to abolish the Yugoslav Presidency and thereby exclude the possibility of a peaceful solution to the Yugoslav crisis.

The president of Serbia opted for the politics of war. Bringing the tanks into the streets of Belgrade, undermining the talks on the future Yugoslav framework serve only to testify his selfish power- loving essence which the Serbian people can not tolerate any more. Milosevic can not go on putting the blame on his self-created enemies. The Serbian people have had enough of his lies, they no longer wish to endure the isolation he imposed or his politics of force. In the interests of the Serbian citizens we ask of Slobodan Milosevic to immediately resign his post.

The Hopeless Minorities

Milosevic's main fault could stem from the model of power which he adopted and furthered. Just like in Montenegro and Bulgaria after the elections, the communist party is using the policy of "personnel sediment" in all the strategically important institutions (state administration, mass media, big companies) and is practically continuing its domination. "The unbearable lightness of ruling" which the SPS has been successfully demonstrating causes desperation of the opposition and serves only to encourage its extra-parliamentary activities which culminated on March 9. The so-called proportion index, which determines the relation between the number of voters and the number of seats in Parliament is: 67 for Serbia, 76 for Croatia, while in most Western democracies after World War 2 it is 86. In the countries with the proportional representation system it is 94. This means that the interest of the great majority of voters is not represented which increases the possibility of extra-parliamentary conflicts. The elections of 1990 were held at the time when the national antagonisms were rising and when the national leaders were advancing the interests of their nations.

The author of this analysis Vladimir Goati in his paper "Small nations and ethnic minorities in modern Europe", says that, apart from the deliberately instigated nationalism the "new wave nationalism" was gaining momentum in Yugoslavia, which in 1991 resulted in ethnic conflicts. It was also helped by the inadequate "institutional engineering".

The swift constitutional changes which were started in 1989, a model of the democracy of the majority replaced the institutions of the old system, which aroused an "allergy reaction" in the ethnically heterogenous republics. There were 75 of Croatians in Croatia and the respective figures for other republics were below 70. The democracy of the majority, says Goati, turns national minorities into "politically hopeless minorities"; under these circumstances the position of the minorities is marked with stigma. The reactions ranged from the non-recognition of the new order and the attempts to forcibly create their own states (Serbs in Croatia), through the passive resistance of the Albanians in Kosovo (boycotting the elections, refusing to recognize the political institutions in Serbia and the creation of alternative political structure) to organizing minority parties which function much like the disloyal opposition (the case of the Party for Democratic Prosperity in Macedonia, with predominantly Albanian membership).

Goati reminds of the efficient democratic solutions used in the socially heterogenous societies. He is thinking of the modern consensus democracies, based on the experience of the socially heterogenous European states (Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Netherlands). These states have, by adjusting the democratic institutions to fit their own needs, arrived at the model which is drastically different from the one prevailing in Great Britain - the decision making process takes place with the participation of all segments of society which means that the power is diffused. He then goes on to list the characteristics of the consensus democracy models: the inclination towards broad coalition of the parties in power, the separation of legal and executive authority, the minority representation, the proportional representation, the multidimensional electoral system, the territorial and non-territorial federalism and the written constitution which clearly defines the rights of the minorities.

The case of Milosevic clearly indicates what happens when a rigid system replaces the flexible one. The disintegration of the country, the ethnic conflicts, the war and the failure of the modern idea of peaceful inter-ethnic coexistence, which was behind the Yugoslav concept as well, means further distancing from the European political concept.

Did the Yugoslav catastrophe produce anything good? Some tabus in Serbia seem to have been broken - Vuk Draskovic (the leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement) flatly declares that he will continue his talks with the Albanian alternative in Kosovo while the democrats claim that they nurture friendly relations with the minorities. Before, this could have provoked accusations for "treason" in the media. The democrats suggest in their Declaration that the rights of the national minorities should be secured within the appropriate institutions and with representation in the organs of power, which would render the existence of the purely national political parties obsolete. There are also suggestions to reopen the negotiations with the Albanians, Hungarians and Moslems concerning common life in the democratic Serbia. Goati remarked that the intervention of the international factors has resulted in certain corrections within the Croatian political system (the autonomy of Serbs was recognized).

The power of Tudjman and Milosevic

The president of the Republic of Serbia, according to Act 86 of the Serbian Constitution is elected directly by the people, meaning that he is accountable to the people and not to the Parliament. Apart from his acknowledged authority to pass laws, act as the commander of the armed forces, putting up candidates for the post of the prime minister, the president of the republic has the power to "dismiss the parliament on the justified intervention of the prime minister". This act places the authority of the president well above that of the Parliament. To be truthful, the parliament can (with the two-thirds majority) call for the president's recall, although this has to be decided by the voters. The proposal for recall is official if the majority of voters support it (Act 88 of the Constitution). Thus, as dr Vladimir Goati pointed out, the procedure concerning the recall is much less stringent than the election procedure, since the latter requires only that the candidate gets the majority of votes (provided that at least a half of the electorate turn up at the elections).

The Croatian president is also elected by the people (Act 95, Constitutions of 1990). The recall procedure is not as strict as it is in Serbia, since the Constitutional Court decides on it with the two-third majority. Although the Croatian president does not have the right to dismiss the Croatian parliament, he still has considerable powers since he is authorized to appoint and dismiss prime ministers. In Serbia, the president only nominates a candidate for the prime minister, while the election is decided upon by the national Parliament. The Macedonian constitution provides less authority to the president of the republic than to the parliament. It is also below the one provided in the Serbian and Croatian constitutions.

Dr Vojislav Kostunica, a democrat, thinks that the present one-party system has imposed the undemocratic presidential system and that Serbia has to be a parliamentary state, which at present it is not.