The Secret of the Red Lighter

A few days later in his first interview, Krunic made another qualification to describe what the new local authorities found: the situation is disastrous. "We’re discovering unbelievable things about the flow of money, manipulation with money and I don’t know how long this will go on. I’m afraid there is no end to it," he said.

The new mayor of Nis, Zoran Zivkovic, used virtually the same words to describe the situation he met with: "We thought the state of the local economy and the city was catastrophic but it’s even worse."

Novi Sad Mayor Mihajlo Svilar complained to a foreign correspondent recently that he discovered that he "didn’t have anything to take over" when he came into office.

The best description of what the new local authorities are facing came from Vozdovac municipality assembly president Nebojsa Atanackovic: "I had the feeling we were entering a mined house because everything the Socialists left behind was in catastrophically bad condition. There was a "mine" in every drawer. The municipality building itself is a minefield and we’re treading carefully although many of those mines are unavoidable. Our colleagues who are taking over other municipalities at least have the technical conditions they need or enough money. We’re being shocked here in Vozdovac both materially and morally," Atanackovic said recently. VREME asked him to describe one of those shocks and he disclosed something unbelievable: during their final term in Vozdovac, the Socialists illegally handed out 157 apartments. Of that number, 97 were handed out in the space of just two days on November 15 and 16, prior to the second round of local elections.

Those statements and warnings indicate that in most of the places the opposition won at the local elections the new local authorities found the same economic situation: vast debts, gaps in the budget, crippled local economies, many traces of hastily removed evidence of tampering.

Nis Mayor Zivkovic says just 20% of the 13,800 employees at the city’s Electronics plant are working. Under 50% of the employees at the city’s other economic giant MIN are going to work (which doesn’t mean they are actually doing anything). "We have some 35,000 unemployed people in the city right now. The number of people who can work and have jobs isn’t over 15%," he said.

The Nis city authorities found a 35 million dinar hole in their budget. Zivkovic (the first chairman of the recently formed association of free towns) said hopelessly empty treasuries are characteristic to all the places Zajedno won. One of the things he discovered as a characteristic of Nis is that the Socialists used city budget funds to finance their election campaign spending millions of dinars. That makes the recent SPS-JUL statement that they will protect the population "from the activities of parties financed and instructed from abroad with the goal of toppling the constitutional order, independence and sovereignty of the country" seem very cynical.

One of the traces left behind in Nis leads to the privately-owned Pelikan Print company which printed local election ballot leaflets. They were paid 0.68 dinars each for the 200,000 leaflets they printed but later it turned out that they could have been printed anywhere at a cost of 0.02 or 0.03 dinars. The new authorities asked Pelikan Print to return some of the money. No agreement was reached and the whole thing ended up in court. That now makes the elections in Nis the most expensive as well as the most irregular. After everything that was made public on the basis of evidence that wasn’t destroyed and confessions by some leftist dissidents, Nis local government chief Branislav Jovanovic seems to be right when he says he can’t tell whether "the authorities in Nis were part of the Mafia or whether the Mafia ruled the city".

The local authorities in Kragujevac also found the treasury empty and losses registered in funds and public companies and institutions. Some figures show that the economy in what was once one of the most developed Yugoslav towns is working at just 5% of its capacity. Kragujevac today is one of the poorest towns in Serbia and seems like a mining town where the gold veins have been exhausted. Kragujevac town government head Borivoje Radic told VREME that the town is in a hopeless situation because its economic giants aren’t operating. Those economic giants aren’t under the jurisdiction of the town authorities but their 40,000 employees, 15,000 young and educated unemployed people and 25,000 impoverished pensioners are looking to their new local authorities. "Every third family in Kragujevac is a social services case," Radic said. "The new authorities are meeting with huge problems and are mainly dealing with solving the existential problems of people who want to work or need help to survive."

Radic’s deputy Nebojsa Vasiljevic said the Socialists left behind a budget deficit of 10 million dinars along with chaos in all public companies and funds. The construction site fund has a recorded loss of 4.4 million dinars. Vasiljevic said the local media are also facing a catastrophic situation. Svetlost weekly which was taken over by the state has recorded a loss of 300,00 DEM. Kragujevac TV didn’t pay its phone bills in 1996 and they now stand at somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 dinars. Vasiljevic said that didn’t prevent the former TV chief from spending 6,500 dinars a month on his expense account in a town where workers have an average salary of around 100 dinars. The former local authorities also left behind scandals with flour, foreign currency, medication, cars, farm machines. The new authorities are expected to deal with messes the previous authorities left behind which amount to losses of several million DEM. VREME’s Kragujevac correspondent Zoran Radovanovic said some of the people involved in scandals have changed sides.

The least specific information is available on what the new authorities found in Belgrade. We know that last year 85% of the budget was spent and that the city has lost 25 million dinars. The debts left behind stand at 180 million dinars which brings the total deficit to 430 million. For now that deficit isn’t being felt because the city treasury is collecting money daily from the city’s 3% sales tax. All that is enough to sustain the current situation and pay salaries to people working for the city. There are no other details on what has been left behind.

When they met reporters right after taking over, the new city authorities promised a report on what they found in two weeks. That deadline has just expired and things haven’t moved too far ahead. That impression is confirmed by Aleksandar Milutinovic deputy city government head. "Some strange things have happened since we made that promised and that’s why we’re late," he said. "We came in here with the best intentions of working for the city and it’s people. The people virtually carried us into city hall and expect us to tell the truth. After a few days a number of people who worked in the financial sector, who we expected to help us draft next year’s budget, resigned. Five key people told us they are leaving overnight. I was amazed by their explanation: they said their party had ordered them to leave although I see no reason why their job should have anything to do with ideology. That party is persistently saying that its main priority are the interests of the people. In the meantime, we had to turn to drafting a budget and that’s why we’re late."

Because of all that Milutinovic didn’t want to voice any opinion on the previous city government. This VREME reporter was in Milutinovic’s office just minutes after one of the few remaining financial experts brought in a draft of the new budget. When you add up what the city gets from the republic and what it will collect from the 3% tax up to March 31 when the tax is being abolished, the total income for 1997 will stand at 1.77 billion dinars. The city needs 2.7 billion which means the income falls short by an entire billion. And that’s just to keep thing going. Milutinovic said help could come in the form of the republic giving back what belongs to Belgrade. The way the handover was completed and indications of obstructions from higher levels don’t leave much space for hope that the republic won’t hamper the opposition local authorities. Judging by initial indications they are hoping that things will get as bad as possible in opposition ruled cities and towns. All Milutinovic found in his new office when he took over was a red lighter.

All the people who took over the local authorities from the Socialists can use that lighter to light their way in the darkness they face. Some of them don’t like being called the new authorities because money usually follows the authorities but not in their case. Serbia’s cities and larger towns are facing only problems. The new authorities are expected to soften social despair and show that they know how to rule although their hands are tied without the instruments of power. The best indication of the real power of the new authorities is the fact that Novi Sad Mayor Svilar waited two months to be received by his city’s police chief who is accountable only to his headquarters in Belgrade as well as Novi Sad’s fire chief.

The indications of how things will work is evident in Belgrade where big companies under regime control have stopped buying monthly tickets from the city transport company leaving it without a major source of income.

"The obstruction has begun but we’ll explain that to people and if need be we’ll whistle for 200 days more because there’s no other way," Milutinovic said.