Resignation!

As far as it is known, this is the first resignation of hers from any of her various positions. Resignations rarely occur among local politicians - nevertheless, let's start from the beginning.

The above mentioned Fund was established pompously in 1995. The goal was to obtain funds in order to construct apartments for assistant professors from the University of Belgrade. As Dragutin Velickovic, who was rector of the University in that period, used to repeat on each and every appropriate occasion, this step would have to prevent the emigration of promising young scientists from the University.

As far as is known, everything was done by the book. The founders were the city Government and the University, and around twenty members of the Executive Board were elected. Among them were, thanks to their positions, the rector, the mayor, the minister of science and technology, the president and several members of the University Council. Ph.D. At first, Markovic was a member of the Fund's Executive Board, because she was a member of the University Council, but later she became it's president.

A transfer account was opened, which has accumulated up to now, as far as we could verify, some three and a half million dinars, excluding accrued interest. Part of this sum came from state institutions, part from donors. Most of it, approximately two million dinars, was paid to the Fund at the time Slobodan Unkovic, currently the SRY's minister in China, held the position of minister of science. Also, part came in goods, which means that some companies donated already built apartments, with the idea that the Fund would obtain money through their sale. A construction site was chosen and a model for the future apartment building block was created (which is still stored at the rectorate). Finally, the idea was to approve mortgage loans to young scientists for the apartments, who would later pay them back, once the accrued sum reached a "critical mass" (a sum which has never been precisely set in figures). At this point in the phase of negotiating with the banks (who have ceased issuing all types of loans long ago, let alone mortgages), everything stopped, and the president of the Fund submitted her resignation in writing, without any explanation.

No one interviewed from the University believes that her resignation has anything to do with the Fund itself, or its successes and failures. The prevailing opinion is that the resignation was the consequence of the student demonstrations from last fall and winter, when it became more than obvious what the University, including the promising young scientists whose housing problems she had been supporting, thought about the regime and it's leaders, herself and her husband. There was, however, also a formal reason to resign - she is no longer a member of the University Council.

News about the suspension of the Fund was released simultaneously with the news about Markovic's resignation. However, in an interview for the Vreme weekly, this was denied by the acting rector of the University, professor Dragan Kuburovic, and the assistant professor Ivan Raskovic from the School of Architecture, both members of the Executive Board of the Fund. The fact that the Fund's president has resigned should not cause any changes in the status of the Fund itself, since an institution of that kind can be suspended only by its founders.

Understandably enough, the future inflow of money to the Fund is also in question, although, of course, conditions for the young scientists to solve their housing problems have not improved in any way (one of the assistant professors we talked to lives with her two month old baby in a rented apartment in a suburb area with no sewerage system).

There is also a story that the Fund only accumulated money thanks to the fact that Mira Markovic was its president, and that, unlike the first lady, the other members of the Executive Board were not exactly showered with the calls from potential donors. According to one version, there was a period of time when the Fund established a precise schedule for receiving the new donors. When others were on duty, there was no crowd, but on the days when it was Mira Markovic's turn, a long winding queue of potential donors formed in the hall.

The flipside of the same story is that the housing problems of many young scientists have not been resolved, and that most of them had no hopes that the Fund would resolve them anyway; they have counted from the very beginning that the resources of the Fund would be reserved for those obediently devoted to the regime.

Anyway, the acting president of the Fund is now Ph.D. Branislav Ivkovic, the minister of construction works, who was, until the last elections, a very exposed chief of the Belgrade branch of the SPS. And the left oriented parties have a new project within the University - they have established the University Committee of JUL. It's goal is "to influence the operations of the University and solve it's existing problems and contradictions." There are claims that this is not contrary to the law which forbids the operations of the political parties within the University (!), and JUL will, "through its programs, support the protection of the educational system from any political impact, especially the impact coming from various parties (?!)."

On different occasions, Ph.D. Markovic has lent her reputation to certain projects. She was the president of the Committee for the Anniversary of the 1000th Issue of the magazine @ena. In an interview with this magazine on that occasion, she mentioned that she was the president of the Executive Board of the mental institution Laza K. Lazarevic for two years, that much was done for the institution at that time, but that the problems of health care needed much more thorough attention.

Further, she is the president of the Yugoslav Foundation for European Integration. In that role, she visited Bulgaria last year, where she stated, among other things, that "Europe can not become a community of the peoples, if the Balkans is not included". Several years ago the newspaper Gradjanin from Pozarevac released news that Mira Markovic became the president of the committee for auditing the documents submitted by candidates who applied for the position of sociology techer at the Higher Technical School in that city.

However, the most famous of her projects was the unforgettable Chinatown in Belgrade. We would like to remind people about the panic experienced almost two years ago, about the frequent reports published in the Politika daily from cities with at least several Chinese restaurants, that Chinatowns are a component impossible to live without everywhere in the world. Throughout a city whose citizens live with ten thousand problems per capita, there was a feverish search for a site for a Chinatown; it was the main topic of conversation, and someone even published a foreboding warning that one morning the citizens of Belgrade might arrive downtown and find out that the buildings of the Academy of Science, the National Theater and the National Museum with the surrounding objects had been turned into pagodas. Ph.D. Markovic wrote in her diary on February 26, 1996: "The Politika daily has recently initiated an action to open a Chinatown in Belgrade. The action is entirely justified, having in mind that Belgrade has been known as the most open and most modern city of the Balkan peninsula for a long time. All major world capitals today have either a Chinatown or a Disneyland, or both. This is, anyway, considered one of the criteria for estimating the level of urbanization of any city." In the meantime, something has obviously happened, since not only was no Chinatown ever built, but no one even mentions it any more. But the written record remains that Ph.D. Markovic, at the end of her visit to Peking during this Chinese euphoria, had "stressed that it is in China that the left oriented people from all over the world may find support for their beliefs today."

Of course, left wing ideology has a very important place in the arrangement of Ph.D. Markovic. Everyone who sees JUL as a pure political horror, and also some of the wealthy, mobsters, profiters, managers whose managerial success originates from the left's political protection, those who connect the Yugoslav left wing with limousines, villas, shady gardens, and with influence which does not come from the number of votes one wins in the elections, and those who think that Mira Markovic is an even greater evil than her husband, should read the following explanation: " JUL's concept is that people should live in peace, have their jobs and live decently from them, their children should attend modern schools, be treated in comfortable hospitals, elders should have serene old age, cities should be clean and beautiful and villages should resemble them more and more, fathers should be responsible and gentle to their children and mothers beautiful and fresh, sport should be present at large and our literature should be world literature, all should have apartments with specious bathrooms, weekends should be spent on picnics, evenings at the theaters and vacations on the seaside, everyone's work should be rewarded, children should sleep tight, men should not boast and women should not gossip, buses should be clean and have seats for everyone, one should be able to rely on one's children in old age and on one's friend when in need, and everything should be "warm from life", as in that beautiful poem from my childhood which is no more to the taste of the education system". (Mira Markovic's Diary.)

And how should all this be achieved? "Only the radical and aggressive left wing can respond to the radical and aggressive right wing. There's no other choice, if the left wishes to exist at all" (Mira Markovic's Diary). And finally, what is to be done? "Each step in the process of suppressing the chaos and violence is precious. Many steps in that course will get us out of the crisis, I know. But those steps must be CLEVER, ENERGETIC, and, of course, HUMAN." (The Diary, highlighted by M. M.). Cheers!