Serbia Is a Great Mistery

Djindjic is not on RTS, but regime-controlled newspapers are full of comments on him and his Democratic Party (DS). Nearly every day one can read that someone has decided to leave the party because he is "fed up with Djindjic's autocracy," and the fact that DS was "abandoning its original principles." The first DS president Dragoljub Micunovic was recently expelled from the party. Shortly after that, the party got a new member - the forgotten Milan Paroski, who had been breeding horses for a few years, and politically always better went along with Seselj than with Djindjic.

Most of those who are leaving say that Djindjic who started off from "the civil and liberal position has almost got as far as a camouflage uniform" and that this party has nothing in common with what it was six years ago, partly due to the personnel transfusions of the Paroski type. At the same time, there are rumours that the regime is strongly shaking the Democratic Party from inside.

Zoran Djindjic, often labelled as "pragmatic," makes the impression that he does not care much about the rumours and does not look like a boxer with a glass chin. He "guarantees" that less than one per cent of DS membership followed Micunovic, he is preparing for the elections and a joint opposition list, he is talking about his four-reforms programme and says that 1996 is the "turning point." Why "turning," or why more "turning" than the previous years?

DJINDJIC: First of all because Milosevic can no longer move the focus of attention from some internal issues to foreign ones. This is the first year in ten when we shall be dealing with internal affairs. Milosevic came to power through a state issue - that is Serbia's unity - and since then he has never returned home. We have been away on a trip ever since. As a nation, we don't have our home, we talk about the neighbours and our fence. For the first two years, we listened about Kosovo, Vojvodina and a united Serbia; then for two years we listened about Yugoslavia - whether it would be a federation, or a confederation, what Slovenia or Croatia wanted. After that, for three years it was only war, peace talks, London, Paris, maps... All of this has been used up as a possible valve for unsuccessful internal politics which has been run undemocratically. The people were looted, the hyper-inflation had been planned, as well as the private banks, but none of it was the issue. The television drew the people's attention elsewhere. So, this year, we are returning home.

So what is it the socialists are taking to the elections this year?

The Serbian question was only a demagogic reservoir to help them stay in power. Since they have, in the meantime, completely deformed the national and state issues, so that one no longer knows what is Serbia and what is Yugoslavia, the time has come for a social issue. They will go to new elections with the maximum of the social issue in the same way they did with the national and state issues and will go as far as a disaster if we let them.

Until recently you claimed the elections would be held as early as March...

I must admit I am surprised they have not been scheduled yet. If I were Milosevic, I would have scheduled them for February.

So the elections are running late...

Milosevic should have announced them with his New Year's greetings. He should have accused the opposition of having destabilized the state by voting against the budget. He should have spread to the West the story that the opposition wanted to revise the Paris agreement, that it wanted to start a war. He could have taken the advantage of the difficulties in controlling the elections and, with a brief Mitevic-Vucelic campaign, could have had the job done. Since he has not done so, I don't know what he is hoping for by the end of 1996.

What is the opposition hoping for? The recently founded alternative parliament seems to comprise a rather versatile company, and a joint opposition list in elections sounds like a good joke...

Before the elections, we must give people guarantees that we shall have the mechanisms to control the authorities and prevent their abuse. No one blindly trusts the authorities any longer. One of the proposals is that the ministers, when making the oath, pledge that their property will be equal and not better when their mandates expire. This calls for a change of the criminal law and stricter punishments for the financial abuse of authority. We must come out with a package of laws which will guarantee that we shall not be handing out apartments, business space, contingents of wheat, etc.

Do you really believe that, after all that has happened, you will be holding hands high up together with Draskovic, Seselj, Kostunica at a united opposition convention some time late this autumn like you did ahead of the second round of the 1990 elections?

I have already said, it is no longer a matter of some kind of brotherhood and unity between the parties like it was at the time of DEPOS; it is a very rational job which requires enormous amount of work and ensures that things will not end up with quarrels and accusations. The Democratic Party sees this as the only option. With a number of lists in the elections, the opposition might get the majority on the whole, but each list would then be under the direct pressure of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) which will then try to attract it. The risk of loosing the majority in this way is enormous. The only way to defend ourselves from the pressures of SPS and possible blackmails is to make flirting with socialists more expensive for each of us. This can be done with a united opposition list. In my opinion, whoever decides to leave such a list will be politically dead in Serbia forever.

It had been long before your party organized local branches in the Bosnian Serb Republic (RS). Now you have 18 local branches there. The socialists, radicals and even the United Left (JUL) got into RS before you did...

We have covered about three-quarters of the population there. We had a gentlemanly agreement with RS leadership in Pale not to establish the party there while the war went on. Now there is no reason not to do it. It is no secret that most of our members are former members of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS). Our condition is that they should be the people of spotless past, the ones who took part in no criminal acts or affairs. If we cannot offer it to them, if all we offer is what they have had for five years, then we should better not show up. It will be very interesting to assess the ratio of political power in RS. A party which compromised itself may inflict great damage and vice versa.

You will be opposition to Karadzic in the elections?

We shall certainly be opposition until the elections. We shall try to make a solid party infrastructure until then, to get in touch with the people abroad who can help restore the Bosnian Serb Republic. We are already working on some projects.

You said something about the influence of RTS...

Yes. It was not reasonable to expect that the power of the picture would not be absolute here, no matter how far behind the rest of the world we were. What I am concerned with is the fact that the total blockade and erasing of all important political issues from the public consciousness takes politics into passions. People become silently dissatisfied and their political dissatisfaction gradually turns into rage. This might be good for the opposition, but it is not good for Serbia. It is not good for people to listen always to the same things. I travel a lot and my impression is that Serbia has become a great secret. But that's the way it is. This is some kind of anaesthesia. The dose was strong and was given a long time ago. Some parts of the body are beginning to wake up. However, the operation was not done, the patient was only asleep. In fact, we are now in 1988; none of the problems which were conceived then have been resolved - neither Kosovo, nor the national question, nor the international position of the country.

And during that time the opposition was asleep?

It is unfair to compare what the opposition has achieved in an undemocratic system, in times of war, with what the opposition does in democratic countries. We often tend to think that we are living in a normal society, so comments like "What is that opposition doing?" can be heard. We had to make great efforts to survive in such a situation. The Democratic Party has devoted the past two years only to internal organization.

Have you managed to maintain the party structure?

We have. We have about 600 local branches. We entered the 1993 elections with only 84. Some are better, some worse, some probably exist only on paper. In 1994 we realized that tough times were ahead of us. We started gathering people and forming branches in villages and small towns. It was a good investment and we shall soon see the power of it.

Some people say this is the riskiest period for the Democratic Party and that the regime has secretly inflicted more damage on you than it publicly inflicts on the Radical Party when arresting its members. Some of your important financiers have left...

There is obviously the strategy that all the parties which are not SPS satellites should be eliminated. In the case of DS they had different tactics. In the first phase, in 1994, they accused us of being war profiteers, of trading instead of being in politics. Some opposition parties joined in the accusations. Some of the people who were "war profiteers" soon joined SPS and New Democracy (ND), so the story no longer made any sense. Then came another accusation which was more difficult to prove and also more difficult to deny. This, too, was done with unselfish assistance of some opposition parties. It lasted until the end of 1995. In the last phase, a certain number of people was to leave DS at the time of elections and have others follow, in order to show that we are falling apart. This has been going on over the past month.

Some people think that by cooperating with the radicals you are repelling those who used to see you as the "civil option sensitive to the national." You cannot come to power through an alliance with the radicals, nor can you win the votes of the Serbs inclined to radical national solutions. We would they vote for you when there is Seselj who articulates that story much clearer and louder?

The whole thing is mystified. The left, right, civil, centre - those are children's stories. Three political positions exist in Serbia. The first position is the socialist one, the administrative one which governs the lives of people with a small dose of social corruption. That position is taken by SPS and the only competitor is JUL. The second position is that of national populism which is traditionally attached to radicals in Serbia. It is anti-European, anti-developmental and provincial by mentality. It goes without great organization and discipline, no one knows the expenditures, no one knows the aims, but here we are, we don't need much, we have a little bread, butter and potatoes. The Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) started off from that point and then left it and Seselj moved in. The third position is the developmental, modernizing one, someone may call it civil. It advocates structural changes and this is the position DS took fairly early. The Liberal Party (LS) and the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), which were formed by people who used to be members of the Democratic Party, have not found a fourth position. Neither did Vuk (Draskovic).

You mean the DS's starting point has not changed?

Our position has not been disputed. We were unable to go forward not because someone disputed our position, but simply because we were not attractive enough for people. Our party is now becoming attractive and we will lose only if we are not competent and not because someone might come and say - you have become national, you are no longer civil. That is nonsense.

The fact that we want the Serbs to be able to live across the Drina so that they would not come here does not endanger any Hungarians, for example. The Hungarian who tells us: "I am not going to vote for you because you supported Karadzic," wouldn't vote for us anyway. I could ask him: "What did you lose if I supported Karadzic. Did I attack you, have I ever in my life said something against Hungarians or Croats." I never have. The fact that I love my child does not mean I don't love yours or that I am going to beat him up.