People's Ribbon

The more talk there is about elections, election districts, electoral law, parties and coalitions, the day we’ll really have something to choose seems further away. We should have changed the authorities at the first multi-party elections if only so the people would get the impression that something depends on them, that their will affects something and their vote has a meaning. We should have encouraged the new habit of free choice which is easiest if people see a difference right away.

To Serbia that difference would have meant Slobodan Milosevic in the opposition which didn’t happen the first, second or third time around. At first the national elite said the Serbs have more pressing things to do than change the authorities and Milosevic wanted to show himself as a new one and changed enough. Today many of his original sympathizers would accept the Devil himself as visible progress, which is exaggerated and untimely reasoning.

Milosevic understands that the tremors caused by the fall of the Berlin wall are settling and feels the greatest danger is past so he doesn’t tire himself with exaggeration. He’s cutting tapes and launching new facilities on revolutionary holidays which were temporarily suspended. The chances of his election victory haven’t diminished because of a rise in love and approval for him but because of bad experiences at elections and clear efforts to discredit the vote.

I’m not saying we have to live to vote but it seems civic existence is unimaginable without that and paying taxes. Those two things are the basic form for the relationship between the state and its population. The state takes your money and you tell it what you think. You can’t abolish the state but you can change the government which has to take care what it takes and what it does.

If we aren’t citizens but only a people, as most people here feel, then things become simpler. The people are less selfish; they have a more personal and emotional attitude towards the state; they give it what it asks for and don’t ask how the money is spent. The people always feel indebted and grateful to the state. As a rule, the people prefer a leader than elected authorities since the people are more loyal than citizens and their will doesn’t have to be checked every four years. The authorities change much less frequently by force always with the elated support of the people and a long period of silent support follows. In any case the people always support everything and countries like that are rightly called popular democracies.

In those countries, and there are very few of them left, elections are superfluous but they’re held with special elation, like a state holiday. In the hands of the people, that civic idea gains a completely different meaning. The government of popular democracies never fears the outcome since the elections are actually a roll call of the people with only the seriously ill, lunatics and enemies of the people not responding. The only important thing at those elections is the number of people who didn’t vote since that is the only way to express your will.

Serbia has managed to remain undecided on this issue; it stopped half way and mixed to opposite principles. Under the tradition, history and inertia of the old regime it is more inclined to a popular form of authority but geographically it is too close to the big block of civic states whose influence it can’t resist. In Milosevic’s decade in power huge efforts were made to "give the people their dignity back", i.e. restore and strengthen the principle that the authorities are unchangeable.

On the one hand, interpreters of the Serb spirit proved that the Serbs want a leader and tend to express themselves en masse all at once. Writers and pets competed in attempts to reveal and guess the only true voice of the people and translate it into a cry for a national state. On the other hand, that was combined with techniques of preserving power and experience in socialism between the two wars. Along with plans for war that combination resisted the cry of civic principles and survived the first elections.

Everything was easier later on. The war started and the few civic minded people there were withdrew and sought refuge in other countries. Then we were shamelessly and brutally robbed, as only the people in your own state can be robbed, and that was a clear signal to the remaining civic minded people that they shouldn’t count on tricks like free elections. Only authorities who are certain they will remain in power rob like that.

Voters were told that they shouldn’t take the elections too seriously since the authorities see them as the people and the people can’t be expected to choose but to support the authorities which can’t be changed by force. So when Milosevic cuts ribbons on holidays he’s showing the renewal of the old model of popular democracy in which real accounts aren’t settled but only seeming results shown.

The people have to see he still has some money that he isn’t spending only on himself and his family while the opposition has nothing. That money is presented as his not the people’s since the people in the popular state get only what the authorities see fit to give them. So if Milosevic goes he’ll leave nothing. The king took gold away and Tito spent more than he had. The reasoning of citizens would be completely different but they are the minority.

The only real hope for the opposition in the elections is the possibility of showing the vote as a civic choice not as a roll call where the citizens would vote en masse and the people would abstain en masse. That wouldn’t be a choice between parties but a choice of two forms of state.

The Together (Zajedno) coalition is relatively successful in presenting the civilizational project and it seems there is no big risk of the alliance falling apart. But the danger of the coalition expanding to include the DSS and SRS is not entirely gone. Draskovic, Djindjic and Vesna Pesic might be able to absorb and soften Kostunica but not Seselj.

That gathering of the entire opposition wouldn’t be accepted even by school kids. With that opposition union, Milosevic could sit back and wait for the elections without a care. Seselj would easily destroy and compromise everything the coalition represents. He wouldn’t mind their company but they would mind his as a drunk doesn’t fit in with sober people.

In that case the voters would find themselves facing a stupid dilemma - Milosevic’s or Seselj’s popular forms with Milosevic’s seeming more moderate and acceptable and there would be no civic choice.

The people would vote en masse for one of the offered popular states which means more or less for the same. And that would go on and on and on. Luckily, that opposition union seems to be only hypothetical. But, on the other hand, Milosevic has enough time before the elections to help that associating.