The Royal Dispute

The man, to whom everyone in Serbia, last October, referred to as the "King", has finally decided to come home for the second time. In the beginning of April, after visiting Hungary, the prince Alexander II Karadjordjevic, the Crown Prince of Yugoslavia, will arrive to the remains of the country created by his grandfather.

In the beginning of October of the last year, the entire Belgrade and Serbia literally lost their heads over the prince's first visit. The rating of the opposition leaders who first saluted prince Alexander suddenly went up. The prince stayed in Serbia for a couple of days, and then said: "I shall return", and flied back to London.

In the meantime, the policy of the Crown Prince's London office has suffered dramatic changes. First, it communicated the idea that the prince should be invited to return to the country by "cultural institutions", and not by political parties. Soon after that, his once strong ties with the opposition leaders began to loosen.

The response from Belgrade to the prince's "change in views" came fast, in form of a visit that "was paid" to the Crown Prince by Mr. Vuk Draskovic, Mr. Vojislav Kostunica and Mr. Kosta Cavoski.

On that occasion, the Serbian party leaders tried to convince His Majesty to opt for a swift return to the fatherland, as well as to "clarify" certain issues to him. They explained him that although he should remain a "supra-party figure", he must be fully aware that there is a certain party in Serbia which overtly states that it does not want him there, and that fact alone puts him on the same side with the opposition.

Moreover, they told him that he should return to Serbia upon an invitation of the people who are opposed to Milosevic's regime (i.e. the opposition), no matter what his advisers had to say about that issue. By the way, during the entire course of the meeting (and it lasted, with interruptions, for two entire days) the three Serbian opposition leaders deliberately spoke in Serbo-Croatian, in order to keep Alexander's counsellors busy translating and thus exclude them from the "discussion". According to our Belgrade sources, everything ended up "somewhat unpleasantly", with the prince's failing to assume a firm attitude towards his return and his evident desire to avoid all risks.

The guised dissent between the Serbian opposition and the "prince from London" (which both sides officially deny with resolution) became quite obvious to the more careful observers when princess Catherine (prince Alexander's wife) recently visited Serbia. For example, the schedule of her visit, which was made in London and which somehow managed to reach Belgrade, did not include a single name from the opposition circles, while the "real thing" happened in Belgrade, when she met Mr. Brana Crncevic and Mr. Budimir Kosutic (as "non-party figures") and with whom she had a long conversation. Furthermore, she managed to have a quick exchange of opinions with Mr. Dragan Dragojlovic, the Minister of Religious Affairs, and the Foreign Minister Mr. Vladislav Jovanovic.

While she was in Belgrade, the prince's previously arranged meeting with Mr. Vuk Draskovic is cancelled, and prince Alexander spends his time in Athens, and what is even more important, receives certain visitors there.

Namely, a while before the said events, the idea of establishing a Royal Office in Belgrade, which was conceived during prince Alexander's first visit and his "exchange of views" with the representatives of the opposition, is definitively abandoned. The Office should have represented the interests of the Crown, handled the legal matters (particularly those related to property) and worked on the completion of formalities concerning the prince's final return.

Instead of the Office, his new counsellors have suggested, and the prince has accepted, the establishment of three advisory bodies: the Crown Council, the Crown Chamber and the Crown Political Council.

According to our sources, the first of the three bodies was envisaged as an assembly of 30 "prominent, non-party personalities". And some of those "non-party" figures were amongst the visitors received by the prince in Athens (according to the well-informed sources, the "queue" of some ten distinguished citizens was headed by Mr. Matija Beckovic himself). Some sources say that they were appointed "on the spot" as members of the Crown Council. Of course, everything did not run so smoothly, for some of the invited did not show up. For this reason, and because of the fact that many of the selected did not want their names to be revealed first, prince Alexander's London office gave up its intention to announce the names of the members of the Crown Council.

Information from reliable sources say that the "membership of Mr. Dobrica Cosic was not considered". By the way, five seats in the Crown Council are reserved for Serbs living abroad, two for the Serbian Orthodox Church, while the"open competition" for the remaining ones is still on.

Moreover, apart from being dissatisfied with many of the already accepted names, the Serbian opposition was very displeased with the neglect for "its list" of possible members of the Council. His Majesty was also criticized because he has forgotten to offer membership in the Council to a woman or a representative of the younger generation, and what is even more interesting, for forgetting the representatives of the Hungarian and the Albanian minorities.

At the same time, just as in the case of the Crown Council, the names of the possible members of the other two bodies, whose creation the prince had in mind, are also far from being disclosed. Concerning the Crown Chamber, the names of its ten members (as it was planned) would not have been of much interest to the public in the first place, because they would have, nevertheless, been the prince's closest friends and relatives.

The obstacles to the constitution of the Crown Political Council are much larger, quite possibly because of another "clash" with the opposition circles. Namely, according to some information, prince Alexander's intention to grant membership to the representatives of all parties with five thousand or more members, has provoked a strong reaction of the opposition. Their first objection that any party can arbitrarily claim that it has the required number of members was followed by a more violent one, expressed in form of the following question: does the prince intend to have "fascists like Mr. Seselj" in his Council?

To make things even more interesting, the opposition has recently announced that it will openly criticize the prince if the whole story about the two councils ends up with his failing to hear the "opinion of the opposition" and granting of membership to (in)famous "non-party" personalities and politicians of dubious character.