Derby in Politika

The story of the distribution of power in Serbia was truly completed on Sunday, October 5 around 5 o'clock in the morning. The two inspectors of the City Police Department led Dr. Zivorad Minovic from his office at that time, put him into a small Fiat vehicle and whisked him off for a "short talk". Some fifteen hours later, when he was finally released, Dr. Zivorad Minovic was bereft of a function, while the spectators were left to deduce that Slobodan Milosevic, the President of Serbia, has cut off the last link which has connected him with his own image from a few years ago - an image he is now so desperately trying to shake off.

For that purpose, preceding Minovic, Milorad Vucelic, at one point the first person of Serbian television, left, and on the list for "elimination" came Radovan Pankov, Mihalj Kertes, Mihajlo Markovic, Bora Jovic and many other Socialist leaders for whom nobody even asks anymore whether, but only when they shall leave. Changing his policies, Milosevic changed the people who made those policies effective and transferred power on to a completely new set of people gathered around the Yugoslav United Left and Mirjana Markovic. That the whole "coup" was clumsily done is a completely different issue...

SCENARIO: Against Minovic, a dangerous man who knew too much, the Serbian top officials applied the well-known "hot - cold" tactics. Some of them kept convincing him that everything would be all right and that there was no need for him to worry, while at the same time others were "hitting" him. Sources close to the former president of the company - he personally has retreated into deep "underground" waters and refuses to talk to anybody - claim that in these last couple of months he had managed to speak to Milosevic on a number of occasions and that the President of Serbia had assured him every time that the conflicts in Politika shall be stopped. The last of those meetings, according to the same source, came about around a month before Minovic was terminated. In a four and a half hour conversation Minovic, as we are told, personally suggested that he should leave Politika, and asked that he be enabled to leave without a smear, with a reception, farewell speeches and all else that accompanies such manifestations. Milosevic refused that suggestion, explaining that he still needed Politika's first man.

The last close contact with the authorities that Minovic had, according to stories told by his associates, came about a week prior to his arrest. Dragan Tomic, speaker of the Serbian Parliament, who had on a few previous occasions, following Milosevic's orders, "reconciled" Politika's warring parties, spoke to Minovic and requested of him that all conflicts be suspended while Milosevic remained in Dayton. Minovic, whom his friends praised as a man who "saw two years in advance", simply failed to see this time what would happen to him only a week later.

Apart from being in possession of incorrect and, unfortunately for him, first-hand information, which only serves as evidence of somebody's bad intentions, Minovic was, in the whole incident, followed by bad luck. He did not have any protectors. People like Pankov, Bora Jovic, Kertes... had already been placed on the same list as Minovic, so that the president of the Politika Company found himself in a highly unenviable position. His opponents, people from the Hadzi Dragan Antic camp, the general manager of the Politika newspaper, who in the last instance became Minovic's executor, even boasted of managing to completely "cut Zika off": "Whomever's phone he dialed in the last couple of days it turned out that he was too late - that same person had already received a phone call from somebody else".

In other words, Minovic's fate was sealed long before Milosevic set off for Dayton. The blow followed later.

CHRONOLOGY: If he had not been confused beforehand, Minovic would have felt an alarm bell go off in his head the minute he saw on television who had seen Milosevic off to Dayton. At the airport, one next to the other, stood Mirjana Markovic who he knew didn't like him, Hadzi Dragan Antic who had been trying to relieve him of his duties for a long time, Dragan Tomic who had pretended to reconcile him with Antic, Mirko Marjanovic the Serbian Prime Minister about whom one of Minovic's publications had written badly, Ratomir Vico the Minister of Information who will shortly take over the role of Minovic's prosecutor...

Minovic finally realized what was going on when Politika's sales employees barged into Politika, announcing a strike and accusing him of wanting to sell out Politika's newsstands. Caught in a trap, Minovic unofficially states at that moment that he shall repeat "1992" - the year in which, by holding a general strike, he tried and managed to resist Milosevic's attempts to make Politika state-owned.

He personally starts preparing his employees for a "counter-blow" and decides to try to eliminate the main hindrance in the actual company, Hadzi Dragan Antic, the general manager of the Politika newspaper. The people who witnessed the final conflict, describe it as such:

On Saturday the Politika newspaper has another go at Minovic, calling him to account for the DEM magazine in which a few days prior an article had appeared against Mirko Marjanovic, calling for Minovic's replacement. Minovic tries to smooth things out with the "big boss" and asks for his phone number in Dayton. His sources state that there is only one "hot line" with Milosevic, installed in the cabinet of Mirko Marjanovic. Knowing that Marjanovic was not fond of him, Minovic tries to get in touch with him, but fails to do so. As Minovic's associates state, he was told that Marjanovic was off hunting.

It is interesting to note that on that day the other two important people for this whole story were out of Belgrade. Dragan Tomic, who besides having previously straightened out conflicts in Politika is now, according to the Constitution, Milosevic's Deputy, was in London. Ljubisa Igic, Beobanka's leading figure and the president of the Board of Directors, was in Milocer. Faced with those facts, Minovic apparently opts for an all or nothing game.

He personally convenes a session of the Board of Directors at which he suspends Hadzi Dragan Antic and schedules a referendum in the company at which the employees were to decide upon re-uniting Politika into one company.

Late at night (Politika's first Sunday issue had already appeared on the stands) Hadzi Dragan's staff is preparing an announcement of Politika's editorial staff in which Minovic is accused of longing for a continuation of the war, an unstable Dinar, hyper-inflation, Serbia in isolation from the international community, the cannon fire roar in Srem, smoke from burned out villages over Sumadija... Ratomir Vico, the Minister of Information, acts simultaneously, demanding that law be observed in Politika, calling for the public prosecutor to act. Both the announcement and Vico's statement are being prepared for publication and Minovic tries to prevent it. He asks that the text from the announcement of the editorial board be deleted from Politika's last Sunday issue. Around 1 am, the police arrive in Politika.

Following a two hour long conversation with them, Minovic agrees to publish the disputed announcement. He is then led off to the police station.

A certain opposition leader, after hearing of Minovic's arrest, calls a friend from the police force and asks "why". The answer was "because Minovic is close to Karadzic and wishes to bring him into Serbia".

Which is where the answer lies. As happened in Vucelic's case, Milosevic was first convinced of the "warmonger clan" story, and of "revolutionaries close to Karadzic", after which everything was easy. Minovic, who would never dare think of opposing Milosevic, let alone of ousting him from power, went to prison on just such charges.

Be what may, Minovic was replaced, and in his place arrives Tomica Raicevic, a minister without a portfolio in the federal government. Later, as we were told, the two of them met in the Parliament and talked of the transfer of function. When that should occur - nobody knows. Following his termination, Minovic has remained in his apartment, he refuses to talk to journalists and sends word out that he is waiting for Milosevic to return from Dayton.

WHO'S WHO: One of Minovic's associates says that he refuses to speak since "whatever he says won't be good". Minovic is limited by the actual fact that he was a regime person - Politika, with him heading it, exclusively carried out the whole story of Milosevic's taking over of power in Serbia toward the end of the eighties, just as Vucelic's television shall later bring out Milosevic's war story.

Of all the people in power, according to the stories of his associates, in the last few years, he only trusted Milosevic and kept close contact only with him. He avoided the others from the Serbian Socialist Party (SPS), amongst other reasons, because he was convinced that they weren't his equals in terms of influence.

He maintained his connection with the opposition, being especially close to Dragoljub Micunovic and later with Danica Draskovic. In the opposing camp they connect him, still, to that part of the socialists of the "Backa Palanka group", to which, besides Vucelic and Kertes, Jovica Stanisic, the head of Serbian State Security belong.

Against him, if we exclude Milosevic, he had Mirjana Markovic, Mirko Marjanovic, Tomica Raicevic, Dragan Tomic, and in the last moment a change of heart from Milomir Minic, Ratomir Vico... as well as the powerful rich men like Bogoljub Karic, president of the Braca Karic Company, very close to the Milosevic family.

All of them, along with Nebojsa Covic, the mayor of Belgrade and Zoran Todorovic, one of Yugoslav United Left's (JUL) leading figures, were on the list of those whose dossiers were to be opened up by DEM, a magazine that attacked even Mirko Marjanovic.

However, "the clique", as the above mentioned are called in Minovic's camp, was quicker this time. All that he probably would have done to them if he had the strength and time to do so, they did to him. They convinced Milosevic that they are the ones who should be allowed a piece of the big cake of power and are now jointly nibbling on it. Keeping in mind, as Zika Minovic would say, that the only important thing is "until when".