Big Issues

A few minutes before the elections for the Students’ Parliament were concluded, it was unusually lively at the Faculty of Electric Engineering. There was the queue in front of the voting posts. The fliers with pre-electoral promises (the fair distribution of rooms in the students’ dormitories, the return of the students’ institutions to the students, the fight for the autonomy of the University, the provision of adequate sports halls and the similar) jammed the bulletin boards and walls. Milos Kojasevic was more radical in his slogans, asking his fellow students wasn’t this all "because of some insignificant rector", and "The ones who betrayed the protest once, will betray it again!" He was not elected for the Parliament.

Almost 11,000 (10,845) students gave their votes in the elections. There were 164 candidates, 70 of them became representatives. Voting was organized in all of the faculties, each one of them giving two representatives. As these were the first elections, prepared in a very short period, the decision was to pronounce them regular regardless to the number of participating voters. Since nobody precisely knows the number of active students (of those who attend lectures and enroll in each year regularly) the accurate estimate of percentage that voted is not possible. However, this was probably the most extensive voting for a students’ body, which was, above all, conducted by strictly obeying the rules of the democratic procedure. There were local and central election committees, the mode and the deadline for submitting candidates, data on the number of voters by each faculty, and so on. The elected representatives will elect the president, the ministers and the government within the next few days. Out of 70 members of the Parliament, 27 of them were members of the Main Board of the Students’ Protest and one of the Initiative Board.

The idea of the students’ parliament is not a novelty. After the protest of ‘92 one group of students had tried to create such organization. However, the idea has never been accomplished due to the poor communication among students. The people that had gathered around the idea have spent lots of time to formally register the Students’ Parliament, which they finally succeeded to do, but only in April 1994. Dragan Karajovic, one of the participants in the project, passed the license to the current top people of the students’ protest and suggested that they should use it, and if they wanted to, they could modify the bylaw.

We should recall that the students engaged in the organization of the previous students’ parliament held the series of gatherings at the Dom Omladine (1992) in which all of the relevant parties participated (SDA, the political party of the Moslems from Sandzak had its Belgrade promotion during one of those gatherings). In the fall of 1992 they gathered 27,000 signatures from the students and professors in favor of the autonomy of the University and initiated the candidacy of Milan Panic for the elections of ‘92. They talked to Ibrahim Rugova in Pristina, in June 1993 they brought the students’ representatives from Slovenia and Macedonia to Belgrade, which at the given moment was a tremendous achievement.

It seems that the students are moderately interested in the Parliament and mildly optimistic in respect to its efficiency. Budimir Markovic, the student of history, says that he met the candidate he voted for during the Protest and that he knows about his achievements. He says the following about the problems that this organization should deal with: "Strictly students’ problems, with the extended engagement in the sense of taking the stand when some important political issues are in question, like the election theft." The students’ standard of living and management of the students property are the key issues of the Parliament’s operations. Our conversationalists say that it might happen that the elected representatives estrange from those who voted for them, and also that attempts of corruption could occur. However, their main conclusion is that the representatives are too numerous for the government to try to bribe them and also that if such attempts occur they would probably very soon become known. The acting chancellor Dragan Kuburovic says: "I would not like to be in the shoes of those who are elected for the Parliament if they start behaving differently in the future, because their colleagues, as I have noticed, are not inclined to forgive and forget. Therefore, I am not sure that they will dare to step back."

Larisa Rankovic

The Pensions

The Good Money Thrown after Bad

On each fourth of the month, the state steals half of their pension from the pensioners

From November 1 last year until March 30 this year the pensioners have received four halves, or two whole pensions. However, the pensioners have not forgotten the promise of the Serbian government from five months ago that all the pensions owed for 1996 will be paid before the end of that year, but as of the writing of this text, they were paid only their pensions for November and December. The payment of the first installment of the pensions for January started on Saturday following the Day of the Statehoodship of the Republic of Serbia, but reduced by 12.8%. If this pace continues, the pensioners will receive the first installment of their October pensions at the end of this year’s December. This way, the pensioners lose half of their pension every four months of the year.

The average pension for January was 689 dinars, and the average wage a little less - 614 dinars, while the lowest pension was 308 dinars. The Independent Association of Pensioners, established on February 23, raised their voice. The president of this Association’s Assembly, Ph. D. Milan Djuric, economist, says for the Vreme weekly that the January pension was by 30% lower compared to the average wage and suggests that the calculation of the average wage would be based on the old methodology which is only logical and correct. This is because the aggregate wages can not be divide (as it has been done so far) by the number of workers that did not participate in the distribution, i.e. that did not receive the wages. Djuric claims that this is only the trick of the Republic’s government which it uses in inability to obtain current inflow from the contributions to the pensions fund out of the monthly workers’ income. "The roots are much deeper, and that which insults the citizens, most of all the pensioners, is the fact that the public is deceived through the repeated deceits in the media. However, the opinions of some competent experts, as PhD. Zoran Popov and PhD. Aleksandra Posarac, are much more offensive."

Ms. Posarac has recently stated that the pensioners are the privileged group, Popov that the pensions are too high compared to the wages and that the economy cannot support that. Djuric says that the assertions of that kind result from the uncritical acceptance of deceits. However, they do not understand the fact that the pensions are personal consumption and part of the personal income that each employed citizen sets apart for the pensions fund. It is important not to take the erroneous starting point that the pensions are a social category. The best indicator of the current situation is the fact that the January pensions are four times less than the average pension from 1989.

Also, the pensions can not be considered part of the public expenses. The totalitarian regime has made a catastrophic mistake, says Djuric, by estimating that it suits it better that the pensions fund should be the government’s institution and not the independent organization operating by the rules of market economy. Funds must be managed by the depositors, which means the pensioners, because everywhere in the world the pensions funds are the richest and the most stabile, nobody questions their solvency - that is the capability to settle the matured dues to their depositors. Our government has expropriated the citizens rights of the employed and does not admit personal property of the pensioners because it manages the assets of the fund. The Association posses data which show that from 1969 to 1993, 1127 organizations were financed, non-refundable, from the pensions fund by the order of the government of Serbia. If this sum is to be reevaluated by the interest rate of, say, 6%, we come to the total of DM 1.5 billion.

Djuric says that the assertion that someone is supporting the pensioners is absurd, that it is an incomprehensible way of thinking of some economists who present only the data that in 1990 there were 3.6 workers per pensioner, and today only 1.6. To return to the rate from 1990, we would have to employ 7 million new workers. It is not true that today the workers support the pensioners and the fact is that the government manipulates with somebody else’s property.

The Independent Association of Pensioners will ask from the Serbia’s government that, starting January 1, the pensions should be harmonized with the index of living costs and not with the trends of the wages, and that the back pay of the pensions be completed by June 30, 1997. They will also ask that the two and a half withheld pensions should be paid until the end of 1997, and that the pensioners be free of paying interest on arrears for the communal and telephone services, electricity and the tax on property.