Curses and Promises

Serbian parliament deputy Speaker Miroslav Zdravkovic banned the deputy groups of the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), Serbian Radical Party (SRS), Democratic Party (DS), Serbian Democratic Party (DSS) and Democratic Union of Vojvodina Hungarians (DZVM) from meeting on February 1 (for a session of what is popularly called the parallel parliament) when they were scheduled to adopt their resolution on human rights violations in Serbia and a declaration on the democratic transformation of Serbia. Zdravkovic said "the rules of parliament do not allow for the joint work of deputy groups" and added that "there is no need to hold the meeting in the Serbian parliament building".

The opposition opted for the minimum of protest and made a statement in from of parliament with several unbelievable threats.

Tomislav Nikolic (SRS): "This is naked dictatorship. Slobodan Milosevic has taken on the burden of war against the four strongest opposition parties and that will come back to haunt him soon".

Zoran Djindjic (DS): "The people who rule Serbia are violating civic, human and deputy rights and have given us more proof that the opposition is right when it raised the issue of human rights violations."

DSS leader Vojislav Kostunica added that "authorities that are powerful and sure of themselves have no need to raise the obstructions they do in Serbia" and added that "the joint work of opposition parties can only be prevented with a ban on opposition parties".

SPO leader Vuk Draskovic said the parallel parliament will meet in front of parliament "if we are banned from the meeting hall for a third time". Several days later he repeated that the SPO feels the decision by Belgrade city authorities to limit the sites of mass gatherings is unconstitutional and that the decision won't be respected because March 9 will be marked with a mass rally. He called participants of the March 9, 1991 demonstrations, parties, unions, students and workers to gather and show that they can effect changes which would take Serbia into Europe.

Draskovic's populist power can only be guessed at now since the 1989 east European velvet revolutions have been forgotten and the post-trauma lethargy in Serbia is great as well as opposition fatigue.

The opposition said it would try to form a parallel parliament at federal level and the authorities started their obstruction system. Belgrade city assembly security (February 2) did not allow a press conference by opposition group chiefs (DS, DSS, SPO and SRS) so the opposition demanded an apology from Mayor Nebojsa Covic but he refused claiming that the opposition chiefs never mentioned a press conference when they met with him a day earlier. Opposition spokesmen said they wanted to inform Belgrade residents of the real reasons why the city services are operating so badly.

Last week it seemed that the varied Serbian opposition was on the verge of finding a common denominator in its fight for human rights, political principles, parliamentarism, democratic institutions and responsible and controlled authorities.

The SRS deputy group soon distanced itself from the text of the resolution on national minorities. Tomislav Nikolic explained a few days later that the SRS opposes collective minority rights which they feel push them into ghettos and that unlike other parties they insist on a union of all Serbs under the right to self-determination. He offered a compromise solution: the Radicals would leave the hall during the voting on the resolution to allow the other parties to adopt it. The Radicals seem to have angered the Hungarians, or perhaps the snow stopped them, in any case they didn't show up for a February 6 meeting of the parliament groups, things got complicated and the latest opposition union met with the usual crisis. It was obvious in the moment of anxiety when ordinary clerks prevented a meeting of the parallel parliament because it lacked a quorum.

Serbian constitutional court judge Slobodan Vucetic explained that opposition parties have the democratic legitimacy of organizing as a political but not a legislative body. The constitution only regulates the organization of the authorities and parliament should operate only under its rules which have the power of laws. The parallel parliament can't adopt any decisions since t does not include a majority of deputies and has no basis in legal procedure and its decisions are not obliging to anyone.

On the other hand, the opposition parties that enjoy the support of a majority of voters have the democratic legitimacy to find ways of organizing politically since the ruling party that has less voter support but more deputies is using parliament, which the opposition left, as its voting machine. Alternative and non-institutional methods are democratically legitimate as long as they don't advocate or use force.

Without the opposition, the multi-party parliament is suffering an upset an the president of the republic, if he keeps to the spirit of the law, now has more reason than ever to dissolve parliament.

The Socialists now have several things with greater priority on their agenda (bringing some money back from Cyprus, a party congress, elections in Bosnia) and don't want elections now. They don't have to change the federal constitution (as some of the opposition and media have speculated) to strengthen the federal president's powers from Milosevic's future needs. A change in the federal constitution is hard to do since seven of its articles need the agreement of both federal units to be changed.

A non-party source said their goal could be to use the fact that the international community has recognized he authority of President Milosevic to quash the opposition and secure a victory in 1996 federal elections which would bring their boss to the post of federal prime minister which, with a suitable parliament, is equal to the powers held by the German chancellor.

Along with ideological differences (privatization, the Left and others) those tactical interests of the ruling party probably dictate the mood in which parliament clerks can humiliate deputies.