Slobo Without Makeup

As a former athlete, Danko Djunic, the now former Vice-President of the Federal Government, is not a man who likes to lose.  While it is precisely a sense of defeat which is at the root of his decision to resign.  Mr. Djunic is intelligent enough to realize that the only thing worse than defeat is being unable to accept defeat.

Danko Djunic submitted a cordial letter of resignation to Radoje Kontic, President of the Federal Government, on the 26 of March this year, offering to stay at his job until a replacement could be found.  However, when on the eight of April the news of the resignation leaked, everything soon came to a head: Jovan Zebic, a timeless character and a man for every occasion, had been assigned to the position of Vice-President of the Federal Government responsible for coordinating economic activities, strategic development and normalization of relations with international financial institutions.  Danko Djunic has remained on very good terms with Radoje Kontic.

And even though the news of this resignation caused a certain amount of excitement, no one was really surprised.  In actual fact, this news was brewing for a full six months, right from the time when, before leaving for Montenegro at the request of Milan Beko, the then Serbian Minister for Privatization, Mr. Djunic stated that the presidential elections in that federal unit were finished and that their result should be accepted as legitimate.  Slobodan Milosevic quickly requested Danko Djunic’s resignation from the Federal Government, but Premier Kontic (only he knows how) managed to keep his Vice-President where he was.  What followed in Serbian public opinion was a marginalization not only of Djunic as an individual, but of every one of his efforts to turn the Yugoslav economy toward a reform course: from negotiations with international financial representatives, to the Law on Old Foreign Currency Accounts (which has been stewing in Federal Parliament for over five months), to the modern version of the Law on Investment Funds and Bonds.  This was also reflected in the fact that Mr. Djunic was not informed about the devaluation of the dinar, even though he and his team not only supported such a measure, but had prepared the decision with expert support for a full three months.

Although patience is a necessary virtue in politics, it appears that Mr. Djunic decided that this is not a role he wishes to play, perhaps worried by the idea that everything withers after it reaches maturity.  In any case, following his first and only public statement after his resignation became public, he explained everything to Reuters with one single sentence: this is a time for politicians, while he is a technocrat.  Mr. Djunic still believes that he saved his soul both by what he attempted and by leaving.

Among analysts cynical about role that Slobodan Milosevic intended for Djunic by appointing him to Federal Government, there is a belief that his resignation means that ?Slobo has been left without makeup”, because no one among them, with the exception of Mr. Djunic, ever believed that the President of FRY truly favors economic reforms (Djunic, on the other hand, believes that reforms are not foreign to Milosevic, but that they are merely not his priority).  But a good number of journalists are clearly crestfallen, even though they say: ?Let us understand each other, Danko is no saint”.  For them, all together it is ?just like in Montenegro, where you could choose between Milo and Momir; which is not a complete choice, but you choose the lesser of two evils.”  Mr. Djunic’s colleagues, who are his competitors as leaders of a scientific institution, are neither crestfallen, nor saddened by his departure because they believe that he used the position of Vice-President of the Government to lobby for contracts for the Economics Institute.  Djunic himself always denied such insinuations, considering that disdain and vanity are at issue.

Finally, there is still no impression that the acceptance of defeat can be equated with giving up.  On the position of President of the Executive Committee of the Economic Institute of Belgrade, Danko Djunic is bracing for new battles.