A Week Without Mile

At the upper floor of the future McDonald’s in the Trg Oslobodjenja in Nis, there is a strong draft. Only one half of the windows has been fitted with glass. Mortar, mud and broken bricks are scattered all around, and in the middle of the room, in a primitive and broken wood stove, fire merrily blazes, fed with wooden refuse. There are never more than three to four men gathered around the fire; all the others, a few dozen of them, are squeezing around the balcony which for a month now has been used as a stage for the speakers who every afternoon address the amassed citizens of Nis angry because of the theft in the local elections, the most unscrupulous one so far in Serbia (see text How They Forged the Elections).

On the balcony and behind it gathers the elite: local party leaders, guests from Belgrade and other cities of Serbia and Montenegro, professors, intellectuals, doctors, clergymen, journalists... Along with 5 to 6 announced speakers, the mass is each day addressed by at least that many additional "intruders", and at least a few dozen of the present esteemed public figures, with their eyes sparkling, await the opportunity to seize the moment of imprudence of the organizers, grab the microphone and convey to the entire world their message, regardless of the fact that it has previously been repeated a hundred times. The message, in short, says: "We’ll endure until the thieves return what they have stolen and suffer the consequences."

Those who regularly gather under the balcony are extremely tolerant, cheerful and determined. Every day, 10 to almost 25 thousand people come to the Trg Oslobodjenja, and the greatest number was registered a day after the president of the Republic’s Assembly Dragan Tomic called them fascists, as well as on Sunday, December 8, when the arrival of Vuk Draskovic was announced, to be canceled later, but with no consequences upon the atmosphere.

Naturally, there are less demonstrators than in Belgrade - although the proportion is the same in respect to the size of the two cities - but the citizens of Nis are in better shape: they first hold the meeting, then go for a walk (at one time they crossed 14 kilometers, from one to the other end of the city!), then meeting again. They also have better lungs, so that Belgrade’s record of 15 minutes of whistling at the mention of the name of the President of Serbia was convincingly exceeded. With the nearing of the New Year’s and Christmas festivities, the atmosphere gains more of a carnival air and of the traditional extortion of evil spirits that have multiplied in Nis more than anywhere else. There are more and more confetti, balloons, firecrackers... Dancing and singing goes on, the music is loud and the captions on the signs are even more witty.

Everything is almost the same as in Belgrade, except that here there is an air of political naiveté: unlike Belgrade, there were no gatherings in the streets every little while, there were no disappointments and, the most important, the opposition did not have a chance to rule on the local level and did not have its Kazics and the like.

From the Students’ View: The entire city is talking abut the theft and everyone - cashiers, shop owners, waiters, pensioners, taxi drivers, youth... - seems to be drugged by a mild, pleasant and somewhat dangerous drug of freedom. After living in fear for several years, the citizens of Nis walk with their heads held up high and breathe with full lungs. "I haven’t seen that many smiling faces in the streets for a long time", asserts Vojislav Stoiljkovic, the professor at the School of Mechanical Engineering. The greatest enthusiasm of the masses comes from the news that Nis is on the front pages and in the headlines of the most prominent world media. People are proud because of the definite change in the image of Nis, which was believed to be the "fortress of socialism" for many years.

The students of Nis also carry on protests every day, supported by many professors and contributors of the University of Nis. Although they clearly draw the separation line between them and the opposition and claim that their protest is not politically motivated, their requests are the same: annulment of the decision of the City Election Committee (GIK) and the Municipal Court, acknowledgment of the election results from November 3 and 17 and responsibility for bringing illegal decisions. "Out of all previous students’ protests - 1968, 1992 and 1993 - this one has the greatest chances for success. We are close to our goal and do not intend to give up," says Nikola Bozinovic for VREME, the fourth year student at the School of Electronics and the representative of this School in the Protest’s Board of the Students of the University in Nis.

As in Belgrade, the students’ demonstrations develop independently from the gatherings of the citizens and are more picturesque and witty. First comes the gathering in front of the School of Philosophy (on Tuesday, December 10, in front of the rectors building), followed by a walk through the city, and the walk regularly turns into a small-scale happening: along with the exhibition of the minutes at the School of Electronics and on the wall of the Assembly, they wear yellow stripes (proof that they are not fascists, as Mr. Tomic names them), burn at the stake the cardboard models of television sets (including a real one, probably broken - finally, this is the electronics industry city), perforate red balloons... On Friday, December 6, in front of the locked up building of the City Hall they laid funeral wreaths with the inscription "To the City Hall - the Students of Nis". After the funeral march was sung, a tribute was paid with a moment of silence. It was interrupted by some joker’s wailing intended for Mile Ilic, which was followed by a burst of laughter. This was the students’ comment on Mile Ilic’s resignation from the position of the president of Nis’s SPS City Board.

The Vizier of Nis: VREME weekly wrote frequently about the almightiness and autocracy of Mile Ilic, the man who, according to the words of the leader of the Radicals from Nis Zoran Krasic, "he never signed anything and was not formally in charge of any decision, but had to be asked for everything". The citizens of Nis can recount for hours about his villa on the Oblacinsko Lake, about the asphalt road leading to his father’s house, about his wife’s fur coats, especially about the business deals of his numerous godfathers, relatives and friends, all following the same pattern: private profits - public (city) property. Odious Ilic behaved as the vizier of Nis, unpleasant tidings about him even reached Belgrade, and the story that he fell into disfavor of the sultan’s wife was confirmed to some extent by the pre-electoral distinction of Nis’s JUL from "those who understand power as an opportunity for reaping personal wealth"; although no names were mentioned, it is not difficult to identify the person.

After an unsuccessful secret mission of the Belgrade captain Nebojsa Covic to force Ilic to resign prior to the elections, on Wednesday, December 4, Nikola Sainovic arrived from the capital. The session of the SPS’s City Board lasted from early afternoon until almost 10 in the evening. Previously, the boys from the kick box club Justicia chased away, and by no means gently, the journalists from Tanjug, the Vecernje Novosti daily and the Dnevni Telegraf daily, so that everything passed silently and with no possibility for anyone to relay the topic of conversation to the people. However, it anyway leaked into the public that at the meeting in Nis the masters and beys of Nis persistently backed up their boss who, according to what those malicious say, gave in only after he had heard the news on his own resignation on the evening RTS’s News show.

So Mile Ilic was replaced, but as a consolation he kept his seat in the Federal Parliament. He was present at the constitutive session of the Council of Citizens on Tuesday, December 10. In his spectacularly unscrupulous interview to the Vecernje Novosti daily (December 6, 1996), Ilic claimed that it was best "to resign from political office as a winner," that he left "with ovation" from the members of the City Board of SPS and that he left "with his head held up and as a man of honor" who could "look anyone straight in the eye"... "He says he can look anyone straight in the eye. Than why doesn’t he come, where is he?" storms an angry mustached man, standing by the sales women who were standing in front of their store and greeting the students passing by. Other comments are similar, but the calm with which the citizens of Nis accepted the political fall of their odious fellow citizen is surprising - after the five minutes farewell whistling, he is rarely mentioned. Branislav Jovanovic, the new ("not constituted yet") federal representative of the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), and Zoran Zivkovic, the vice-president of the Democratic Party (DS) are trying to conceal malicious grins while claiming for VREME that this does not mean much to them and that this is the "problem of SPS’s hen house".

Who Is to Come: "His resignation is proof of the defeat of the Socialists in Nis. We are greeting it as the beginning of cleansing the city that used to be called "the miracle of construction works" and in fact became "the miracle of the theft-works". Our basic objectives remain the same: that the electoral victory be returned to us, that 41 mandates won in the second round be returned to us and that criminal charges be brought against everyone involved in the electoral theft. We will not give up until our requests are satisfied," clearly states Branislav Jovanovic. Zoran Zivkovic believes that Mile Ilic "is the first sacrifice which Milosevic has decided to offer to the people and the coalition Zajedno, in order to buy time until the upcoming republic level elections", adding that he would be happier with the resignation of the president of the City Election Committee and the president of the Municipal Court, Branislav Nesic.

Mile Ilic is replaced by Zivota Zivkovic, nicknamed Zikica, the professor at the School of Mechanical Engineering in Nis and former mayor. He is known as a representative of a "liberal wave" of SPS and he did not have a bad reputation until the first electoral round, when the attempt of adding 12 ballots to his result to enable him to gain the representative mandate already in the first round was discovered. This switch was commented by the opposition with the traditional proverb "Whiles thou, whiles I, so goes the bailery". Those with a longer memory remind that Zivkovic is an old, well checked companion: the speaker at the send-off of the Baton of Youth, vice-dean and dean of the School of Mechanic Engineering, vice-rector and rector of the University and mayor during the era of the bankruptcy of big companies.

His arrival obviously represents a temporary solution, until the "slaughter of dukes" is completed. The general belief is that after the replacement of the vizier the turn comes to his entire suite. "After this, I estimate that 500 to 1000 of them will fall," claims Zoran Krasic, with a note of exaggeration traditional for the Radicals. However, the names of an esteemed SPS member and the president of the Rotary Club, Vojkan Mitic, and of the former president of the Republic Assembly Zoran Andjelkovic are most frequently mentioned in respect to the potential successor of Ilic.

The majority of the rebelled citizens of Nis are not too interested in these personnel combinations - they are ready to be on the streets until their requests are fulfilled. Regardless of the outcome, they have already agreed to celebrate New Year’s Eve on the Trg Oslobodjenja. If necessary, they say, they will celebrate the traditional "Serbian New Year’s Eve" in the same place.

Nis - Chronology

Biserka Zivkovic is a lawyer who participated in the work of the City Election Committee of Nis as the deputy member of the Committee on behalf of the coalition Zajedno (each committee member has a deputy appointed, which is absolutely necessary with 20 hours of continuous work). She talks for VREME about the electoral fraud in Nis, hour on the hour, remembering all the details.

Sunday, November 17, 8 P.M.:

"We are waiting to receive the minutes from the polling stations. They are filled in at the stations and signed by the electoral boards. If there are no remarks, the lists are filled in on carbon copy paper, five copies each, and signed. The law says that each copy is a valid document and can serve as proof in any legal procedure. That means that each copy is considered as an original. Each representative is given a copy and one copy remains with the president of the electoral board while another goes to the City Election Committee and one is posted at the polling station so that any citizen can see the results. That is how the local radio station Bel Ami, thanks to the network of its fifty reporters scattered all over the city, could broadcast authentic results before we actually saw them - minutes from the polling stations were delivered to us surprisingly, or I would say, suspiciously slowly."

Sunday, November 17, 10 P.M.:

"The first minutes are arriving; it is interesting that they come from the most distant polling stations, neighboring villages, so that during the night we confirm 12 representative mandates won by the Socialists. Nothing comes from the city; for example, we were waiting until morning for the minutes from the polling station in the City Hall building, just one floor below us. The radio station Bel Ami announces that night that the coalition Zajedno has won 34 mandates."

Monday, November 18, 4:15 A.M.:

"I suggest to the president of the City Election Committee Branislav Nesic (also the president of the Municipal Court in Nis) that three persons, representing the ruling party, coalition Zajedno and the city authority respectively, remain in the premises with electoral material until the continuation of the session scheduled for 1 P.M. in order to prevent possible tampering with the material. I was led to this suggestion by my previous bad experience from the first round, when there was an attempt to assign 12 additional ballots to the SPS candidate Zivota Zivkovic (who later became the successor of Mile Ilic as the leader of Nis’s Socialists) so he could pass in the first round. President Nesic and the secretary of the City Election Committee Ljubinko Milanovic (also the secretary of the City Hall) rejected my proposal. When I asked who guarantees that the material would not be tampered with, Nesic answers: "I personally and all members of GIK". I ask that the statement be noted in the minute. At that moment the results from two city stations have not arrived yet, so the GIK member of the coalition Zajedno whose deputy I was, Miroslav Rajkovic, in spite of the ban, remained in the building. The last results arrive around 5:30 A.M. and Rajkovic was thrown out. (The executors of the action were the members of the famous local kick box club Justicia, who have at one time collectively enlisted for the SPS, and who in Nis perform the same tasks as Arkan’s "guard" in Belgrade, and they look alike - author's note)".

Monday, November 18, 1 P.M.:

"I notice that the GIK results differ from the results which arrived to the staff of the coalition Zajedno. We bring our minutes and I ask to see the paper from which a man from the expert team reads the results and announces them to us. The copies consist of crossed out figures and the new ones added on. In order to match the calculation, some copies have all the figures changed - the number of voters, the number of valid and invalid ballots... - and some do not have even that. I could not believe it. I said that we could not work on the basis of forged minutes - our copies did not include changed figures, changes were made with a different pen, etc. Nobody was surprised. I warned them that they are the carriers of the most distinguished judiciary functions in the city and that they are working on the basis of a forgery. Nobody even blushes. I ask Nesic what has happened to his guarantee from last night, and he answers: ‘I did not say that.’"

Monday, November 18, around 4 P.M.:

"After subsequent amazement of the type: "Where did this come from," GIK comes to the Solomonic decision to leave aside the crossed out minutes and deal with them later. We still do not have all of the material, although it exists in the adjacent room from early morning. We verify the results on the basis of those minutes that are not disputed."

Monday, November 18, around 10 P.M.:

"The news on the forgery has somehow leaked, so the dissatisfied citizens start to gather spontaneously in front of the building. The GIK secretary Milanovic and his deputy resign because, as they say, "of imperiled security". We discontinue our work."

Tuesday, November 19, 8 A.M.:

"We arrive at the scheduled time, but two policemen do not allow us in the room until they get the order from some chief. It is time to deal with the crossed out minutes. The SPS representative asks that they be verified, we ask for verification on the basis of our copies (the clean ones, signed with no remarks, posted at the polling stations), and the secretary of GIK in resignation Milanovic states "only his opinion" that technology has advanced and he doesn’t know whether the minutes of the coalition Zajedno are authentic or made on some modern machine!? That is why he proposes that the elections be annulled in all locations where different results emerged. That means some 18 or 19 candidates, I do not know exactly, because the coalition Zajedno did not have all the results - in many locations our representatives were beaten, thrown out or the ballot boxes and minutes were simply stolen."

Tuesday, November 19, 10:40 A.M.:

"Rajkovic and I leave the session for as long as the decision has to be made on the basis of forged minutes, because in the atmosphere of outvoting we do not wish to give legitimity to the deceit by our presence."

Tuesday, November 19, 11:30 A.M.:

"Without our presence, GIK holds a press conference and announces the results: 26 SPS representatives, 24 coalition Zajedno, 1 radical, and in 19 electoral units the elections are to be repeated (these are those crossed out minutes from the units where we won or from where we did not have the minutes)."

The night between Tuesday, November 19, and Wednesday, November 20, we don’t know where and when:

"Without informing us and without announcing the time and the place of the session, as well as data on the total number of won votes, GIK adopts the decision that the objections of SPS are accepted and announces the results: SPS gains 37 votes, Zajedno 24, in 9 locations elections must be repeated, the one vote won by the Radical candidate is nowhere to be found, although, I remember well, he defeated his SPS opponent with almost 120 votes of advantage. We realize that all crossed out minutes have been verified."

Epilogue:

"None of our objections addressed to GIK have been answered, all our complaints to the lower court instances have been rejected, we are still waiting for the reply of the Supreme Court to our request of the premature re-investigation of the court decisions."