Big Fear

Dr. Borisav Jovic (Yugoslav Prime Minister at the time of mass demonstrations in Belgrade last March) will not have another chance to ask for the help of the army. The army don't give a straw for the orders issued by the incomplete Yugoslav Presidency. Milosevic has been left alone with his police. Face to face with the opposition for the first time! Does he dare lean on his Minister of Interior, Sokolovic? Should he count on the Vojvodina police? Should he trust the reservists drafted by the police force? He certainly remembers their disobedience last year. The questionable loyalty of the people is tormenting him. What would happen if Belgrade workers eventually hit the streets? Will the opposition unite with minorities' parties from Vojvodina and the Albanian opposition from Kosovo? That would be the end. A million people in Belgrade!

Milosevic is frightened because he knows that his power is based on force and demagogy. He fears the unsatisfied population more than the opposition, because he knows that on March 9 this year the opposition will not try to take over by force. Its prime aim is to commemorate the last year's events, to present at least two political claims and demonstrate it power. It does not plan on breaking into the Parliament building and proclaiming the interim government. It will not do it yet because it still doesn't have a common political platform and the political agreement with the Albanians still doesn't exist. A separate appearance does not pay. Elections for the constituent assembly would thus, be very risky and could only be justified by the redistribution of institutional authority within the existing political framework. The socialists are staying tight. They are facing protracted decay by joining their deceased political predecessors. The opposition is hoping they will sink even lower enough to lose 25% of the votes.

Bozovic's (the present Serbian Prime Minister) economic reform brings poverty to Serbia. The Neo-communist nationalization, price freeze, increased state budget, tax onslaught on the private sector, prohibition of agricultural products import, uncontrolled money issuing and absence of foreign credits serve for a degenerated maintaining of power, without any scope for progress. The end of the war has made the regime in Serbia extremely vulnerable, since in the past five years it produced nothing but political propaganda. The socialists have no other choice but to make their regime even more autocratic. They would welcome the repeat of last year's March 9 since that would justify their use of force. By building up anti-opposition hysteria they have been creating an atmosphere which enables various irregulars and gangsters as well as armed gangs of Serbian ultra nationalist organizations to parade Belgrade with machine guns and bombs. They are not overly concerned about armed right-wing extremists and bandits since they are in liaison with them and are keeping them as a possible executor phalanx for the elimination of the democratic centre. By instigating fear of the opposition they are depriving the public of their right to know the real cause of their general neurosis: violence and crime along with the decay of the economy and the family. It is not their fault that they can only speak through television. They are toying with an illusion. They are using television to endear the people again to the one-party system ideology. It was not their fear of losing power that made them take such an approach, but their awareness of their own guilt, and their instinct for self-preservation as well as the preparations for local elections. They are using March 9 only as an excuse for channelling the fear and terror of the imperialist war of socialist Serbia, through a new "state of war", for which the opposition can be physically accused. The socialists are transferring the blame for the people's fright from war to the anti-war parties which are, allegedly, threatening with further destruction. As soon as Milosevic succumbed to the anti-war politics of the opposition and accepted the UN solutions for the problematic regions in Croatia he lost his justification for survival. The interview with Vladislav Jovanovic, the Serbian foreign minister and Draskovic (the leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement) on February 17 revealed that Serbia is trying to create "Yugoslavia" so as to spare itself from independent joining of the international organizations and so as to preserve its forefathers' dream of a common South Slav state. Europe and America are sure to recognize the new "Yugoslavia" as a political fact and let Milosevic go on using the name of the old Yugoslavia for his baby, but they will certainly not grant the credits promised to Ante Markovic and will divide the property of the former federation equally among the republics. The West is also not likely to let the Serbian regions in Croatia and Karadzic's Bosnia be included in that state.

The Serbian maneuver with "Yugoslavia" represents the catastrophic outcome of the politics of Yugoslav socialists. Only the war alliance between Belgrade and Titograd have remained the main destroying factor of the federation, which has now become an alliance against the opposition in Serbia and Montenegro. That alliance will, however, be a threat to the neighbouring Yugoslav states, since the reason they opted out of the federation refers

precisely to the Serbian military guardianship of the old regime and the Great Serbian politics of force. By offering the illusion that they are the ones who brought peace to Yugoslavia and who saved it, the Socialists are trying to put the blame on the opposition for exchanging an external war for an internal chaos and their inability to lead the state.