We're Not Breaking Up!

Accusations uttered at that time at the expense of, and above all directed against Zoran Djindjic, simmered and grew in the last two months, only to culminate in last Saturday’s discussion on this topic in the session of the Head Committee of DS.  Due to the high degree of interest, the Head Committee session will continue next Saturday.
One of the strongest accusations against the DS President Zoran Djindjic recently came from the pages of our magazine.  Miroslav Prokopijevic, a member in reserve of the DS Committee for Economics, made claims in VREME that the disintegration of what used to be called “the democratic opposition” is spreading after SPO to DS.  With less publicity and more quietly, but no less thoroughly, Prokopijevic wrote, making the following statement toward the end of his polemical article: “Zoran Djindjic is a spent politician.  All that remains is to remove his remains from DS.  If that should prove unsuccessful, then DS will also become a corps...”

However, last week’s session of the DS Head Committee did not appear very insurgent, nor did any of the dissatisfied members of the party attempt to tell Djindjic how it is time for him to leave.  Djindjic himself appeared politically very much alive.  He skillfully chaired the session of the Head Committee, leading the discussion in such a way that party “rebels” found themselves hanging.  Djindjic’s counterattack was fairly energetic, but also moderated, so that everything ended without any heads flying from the bodies of the “unruly”.  The situation looked like a great, looming cloud casting a small shadow.  Or perhaps merely the momentary balance of power.

In his interview with VREME, Zoran Djindjic claims that the entire discussion regarding current developments in DS ended at that.

“We are the only party which tabled the issue of inner relations and organizational functioning, which includes the position of president, in the discussion by the party’s committee.  We are the only party which opened such a session to the public, and it is well known that we do not have any mechanisms in place for disciplining our members.  Of course, it should be clear that we could not have directed our members prior to the meeting so that the whole would become a false gathering.  In last week’s Head Committee, not a single one of the thirty speakers said a single word directed against me, which otherwise does not reflect reality.  Had I spoke about myself, I would have criticized myself more than those speakers.”

VREME: Thus you were not held accountable for party operations?

DJINDJIC: DS has separated so much from other parties in its workings that it appears as a black sheep.  We are a party in which it is possible to say what you like about the party president, in which weighty words can be exchanged, without anyone even dreaming of being forced to resign because of that.  In short, we are a party in which you can be forced to resign if there is dissatisfaction with your work, even if you are the president’s friend.  There is nothing similar on the political scene here.  That is why we suffer the consequences on an ever more frequent basis of the situation in which we created a party which can measure up to European standards, and not to criteria of oriental organizations.  As soon as a problem appears, immediately there are those who say — that must be just as with SPS, the Radicals or SPO.  Such were the reactions following this session.  Now many are asking — was a proposal tabled for holding me accountable.  When you tell them that everything was public, they ask if there is a secret plan.  People have gotten used to the existence of two realities — a visible reality but fictional one, and the other, “true”, conspiratorial.  You know — the world conspiracy, the new world order, Kosovo, everything we don’t see.  And nobody believes their eyes, but only their fantasies.  A backstage does not exist in DS.  We did not hold two session of the Head Committee, a public and a private one.  A public one for show, and a private one for deposing each other.  There is only one session which will be continued.  And the continuation will be similar to part one.

VREME: It used to be that when DS was falling apart, elections were on their way.  Fifty “rebels” is not such a small number.  Will there be a falling apart of the party and an elections this year?

DJINDJIC: There will be elections this year, but not because of the falling apart of DS.  There is no longer that energy for falling apart.  We have acquired organizational stability some time ago, so that falling apart would require something more.  I do not exclude the possibility that certain people will resign.  That certain people will become passive and will close into their private dissatisfactions.  But there are no longer circumstances for falling apart.  Those who appear as critics now are isolated individuals.  None of them have the backing of an organization.  I personally interceded in preventing the ousting of some such individuals from the party.  That initiative came from their organizations.  I stopped such procedures and stated that the party should not protect itself from criticism through forcing resignations.  A crisis would occur in DS if, for instance, ten community committees were to demand a policy review, and in the event that they were unsatisfied with the outcome, they were to decide to go their own way.  Then that would be a problem of the sort we had in 1990 and 1992, but there is none of that now.  Later, with the Democratic Center, we did not have a crisis and a falling apart.  There the situation also concerned individuals who were not willing to respect certain elements of party discipline in the way others do.  They wanted special status.  We told them before the elections, at a moment of crisis — either you commit to party discipline, or we will have to force you out as a preventive measure.  They chose the latter.

VREME: You are criticized for privatizing the party, for behaving like an uncontested leader...

DJINDJIC: I fail to understand what is behind that privatization, nor the criticism about my leadership.  You can speak about privatization when you turn a party into private property, when you put your friends, your relatives and your wife’s relatives into the party hierarchy and when you adhere to a familial staffing policy.  In DS you cannot find a single relative of mine, nor have I appointed any of my friends into any position.  According to the party statute, I do not appoint anyone beside the Party Spokesman.  And we purposely decided this way so that there is no party official who lacks political legitimacy.  If now I have transformed the Party Assembly with 850 members, the Head Committee with 250, and the Community Committees with 150 members into a kind of personal network, then that is truly a monumental achievement.  Then I have managed to make personal followers out of 3,000 officials.  Of course, that is not the case.

VREME: It is said that every good policy must be three dimensional — that it must be characterized by patience, clarity and long-range planning.  Your critics say that you lack all three characteristics.  They say that it is very difficult to distinguish what is actually DS policy...

DJINDJIC: On the contrary.  Those who criticize, saying that I am overly cautious and demand guarantees that are disproportionate, are far more correct.  I am not at all impatient.  I was one of the founders of the party and spent four years in it before becoming president.  I was very patient.  After that, I was the president of the party who had the opportunity to become part of the government in 1993 and 1994.  I was in a position to realize my ambitions many times on the political scene, and I never did so.  Nor do I have intentions to go against the current in the future according to the logic — we are in a crisis so there is little time.  As much time as the people has, that is as much time as I have.  My time is not the least bit more precious than the time of millions of people.  If they say — he ought to do something, I’m there.  If they say — it’s still not time, who am I to hurry along certain processes.

VREME: Is the source of all these misunderstandings in DS a review, after the fact, of the decision to boycott?  There are many people today who think that that was a mistake?

DJINDJIC: I do not think that that attitude is conscious, but it is the result of an atmosphere which arose in society itself, as well as in the party.  The election boycott and the position of the party are the reasons why some people feel that we are suddenly in a kind of vacuum.  An existential crisis has come about with some people who are probably afraid of freedom.  We entered an area of risky freedom for an organization of such magnitude.  I am most aware of this because I know how big the party is, and everything that goes into keeping it afloat.  I am well aware of that, but that was a calculated risk, a radicalization of our own political position.  And that happened at a time when we decided that without such radicalization we would have difficulty in maintaining our image.

VREME: What is DS getting with the addition of the Students’ Political Club?  Not so long ago you claimed that Milan Paroski is a significant addition, and it turned out quite the opposite...

DJINDJIC: I am trying to bring into the party everything which I perceive on the political scene as being more or less liberal, which is of value, and which is marginalized.  It was so since the time of SPO dissidents Markovic, Gajic, Milicic, through to Paroski, up to today’s Students’Club.  The number of people with positive energy here is so minuscule that the loss of anyone of them is a great loss.  All those who I mentioned possess that positive energy.  Paroski also has it, even though he often contradicts himself.  Had he not made several irrational mistakes, with a little comfort and self-discipline he could have been a model Serbian politician.  I think about the SPO dissidents who lacked enough patience to last out in the game of nerves.  In my opinion, the students are valuable witnesses of the citizens’ protests and their coming to DS is the latest proof we were the cradle for that protest, and that DS is taking them on as proof of being loyal to that protest.  Their coming to DS could mean that they are totally corrupt, which, of course, is silly, or that they are coming to DS because they see a possibility of continuing what was formulated in the protest.  I cherish all this personally, because these lads are the new generation of future Serbian politicians.  I cherish it also symbolically, because the students’ protest was in a larger sense more a symbol of all those protesting citizens of Serbia, than it was of the heterogeneous Coalition Zajedno.  All that is otherwise a very clear combination for both sides.  On the other side, they decided to enter politics by founding the Students Political Club.  They are no longer students.  With that, for us they became political partners.

VREME: You persistently express disbelief at the possibility of SPS and SPO forming a government of  “national unity”.  That event does, however, appear to be nearing its final stage?

DJINDJIC: Perhaps, but I am still not certain that that will happen.  We will wait for it to happen.  That will be the best thing for DS because it will mean the end of the political career of both of those parties.  Their marriage will practically be their end.  Milosevic is aware of that.  He is too canny to enter a trap quite so easily.  A marriage with SPO will be the doomsday for SPS voters.  Entering the government will be the peak of betrayal for SPO voters.  Anyone but SPO can make a coalition with SPS.

VREME: Why should they be prevented from that.

DJINJDIC: Anyone else could explain that more easily.  Political practice in the past seven years has been such that first there was the usual — resignation followed by a resignation, with a band of reds left behind; then “Slobo-Saddam”; then “to battle”.  That was followed by stories about hundreds of thousands of battered youths, of several hundreds of thousands of displaced young people, of hundreds of thousands of unemployed young people.  SPO is that story.  That party is a symbol of an irreconcilable conflict with Milosevic.  That is not the case with the rest of us.  We did participate, now in one, now in another, some more, some less, but it was not all out war.  On the other hand, the SPS nucleus is admittedly made up of army officers and communists, and I do not believe that those people can coexist on a local political level with people whom they perceive as Chetniks.  It’s doomsday.  They are aware of it in SPO.  In SPO no one really cares, because that’s of little consequence to their president.  But it is to Milosevic.

VREME: How will you react to attempts to push you out of local political power?

DJINDJIC: As soon as our first man is replaced, we will announce that they have made a coalition, and will exit that local political authority.  There is no greed there, we get nothing from letting them mow us down one by one.  When they replace one, all the rest will resign.  There is no problem in this.  Of 200-300 of our officials, I believe that virtually every one of them will resign.

VREME: You are criticized for befriending Seselj, and for meeting frequently with officials in the regime which could do harm to DS.

DJINDJIC: All that comes from a warped sense of insecurity.  That is being said by people who are like the little gypsy boy who looks through the window of the candy store and sees everything as swell.  And all there really is there is mere sugar and artificial coloring.  All those people, Milosevic, Seselj, Stanisic, they are all common people.  It is not some select group of potentates.  Now every one of those contacts brings or takes away something.  They are participants in a political market just like the rest of us.  To expect from me to mystify such contacts is plainly silly.  Only someone who does not understand the triviality of our job can do that.  I speak with everyone who is in this business.  There are people who are insecure and think that by attending a meeting with Milosevic, they are certain of being bribed.  He cannot bribe me.  We can talk for 16 years, but I will continue to think that his policies are catastrophic.  And I will always say that.  My principle is communication with everyone.  Let anyone tell me what I did in the past year which helped Milosevic, Seselj or Stanisic?  That I would like to hear.
 

Djindjic On Kosovo

The problem of Kosovo is Belgrade.  Kosovo merely represents its visible consequences.  A crisis would exist in Kosovo regardless of the regime, but there are regimes which are capable of keeping such a crisis under control, and then there are those which aggravate it.  This one is precisely doing that.  It is undermining the very strength of its state.  It is making an impotent organization out of the state, a primitivized, criminalized and compromised state.  When an organism is weak, then even a flu can kill you.  But Kosovo isn't a flu, Kosovo is a serious sickness.  To recuperate from a serious sickness you must have heart.  Belgrade is a dying heart.  Milosevic managed to ruin the idea of a state, the state as an institution.  And the state which he represents isn't capable of taking care of a simple cold, of the problem of pensions, let alone of Kosovo.  We can discuss concepts of autonomy, of dialogue, of education, of everything and anything, but the fact is that only a strong Serbian state can resolve a centuries old crisis of the sort we have in Kosovo.  As we do not have such a state, this crisis in presently unresolvable.  We can talk for as long as we want, with Rugova, with whoever, and that's mere talk.  The solution lies in establishing a state territory in which it is clear who has what rights which will be guaranteed regardless of whether you are black, white, Serbian, Albanian or Hungarian.  But on the other hand, such a state is a state which protects its right to unity regardless of who is attacking that right.  Here certain basic issues have not been resolved, and that is why I see the Kosovo crisis above all as a big question of whether the state can survive in these territories in the form it has held up to now.  Eventual falling apart of state territory will not stop at that, because after all that the question that is posed whether we do or don't have a state to begin with.  That is why Kosovo is the testing ground for our ability to survive as a state.  Kosovo is our sickness which manifests itself in Kosovo.  The cause of the sickness is in Belgrade.