Crocodile Tears

When in the second half of the seventies Slobodan Milosevic became President of the Municipal Committee of the Communist Alliance of Belgrade, he immediately appointed his wife, Mira Markovic, as President of the University Committee of that Same Municipal Committee; and when he who brought him there drew his attention to the fact that Serbians don’t like the wives of politicians very much, and even less politicians themselves, mentioning the case of Milos and Milka Minic, Milosevic, answered: “You want me to get rid of my closest intellectual ally, with whom, only through coincidence, I happen to share a bedroom.”

Now that same University is coming under the control of Mirjana Markovic, because, if we are speaking honestly, the law with which the Government of Serbia is threatening the University boils down to putting this institution under the control of the already formed JUL University Conference, which was constituted outside the law as a political group within the educational system.  Some women like for their husbands to buy them shoes — the wife of President Marcos, for instance, liked that — while others like for their husband to give them a university.  It is probable that the Milosevic's are coming up on their anniversary, and that he therefore decided to surprise her...  However, you will find an article about events at the University in this issue of VREME, while the subject of my text is the above mentioned phrase — speaking honestly.

Let’s take, for instance, the example of Kontic.  If we are speaking honestly, Yugoslavia never had a worse, more faceless Premier, than that which Kontic proved himself to be by allowing himself to be driven from his position without a single word being said, by either those who were driving him or by he who was being driven, about what is really at issue.  The tortured Radoje mentioned gasoline byproducts and agricultural aggregates (according to Roksanda Nincic), while everyone in Parliament and everyone outside of it knew that what's at issue is a demonstration of force that's connected in every way with the upcoming elections in Montenegro.

But let us forget Kontic.  What's at issue here is keeping a position at the cost of collective delusion.  It concerns the Government’s guilt and the opposition’s unwillingness to articulate a real political language which could be used to describe this Government.  The Government is trying to hide a dictatorship with a democratic veil, while the opposition is not ready to say that dictatorships cannot be deposed with democratic means.  Thus a vicious circle has been created in which illusory arguments are being considered — for instance, is the University losing part of its autonomy with the new law, or is it gaining greater autonomy, while it is clear that what is being introduced are criteria of suitability and submission to political parties; then that Kontic left because there were insufficient gasoline byproducts, while it was clear that the way was being cleared for Bulatovic.
Slobodan Milosevic cannot bare a foreign trade deficit in our dealings with the world, at least where politics are concerned.  Where money is concerned, it’s O.K., because anyway it’s us who pay, but were politics are concerned — there will be no deficit in dealing with the outside world.  As soon as he gives the world something, he charges it to the people of Serbia.  Holbrook left with his bag full, while we have been left empty-handed.  Those under fire are the Montenegrins, the University, the electronic media... and the list will get even bigger when he gives the world another concession.  Vojislav Kostunica and Vesna Pesic, leaders of very nationalist-oriented and civil-oriented parties, claim these days that Milosevic is accepting American mediation, but is refusing any sort of European mediation because they, by contrast with others, are not insisting on democratization of relations in Serbia.  Americans are somehow taking a more global view of this, and that view is dramatically pragmatic and boils down to reducing tensions in the region, while at the same time there is an attitude of “who cares” toward the possibility that all of us here might drown.  It turns out, and this is real political language, that the only true domestic question in Serbia is the character of the regime, and Milosevic is quite correctly choosing those partners who permit him to play with us unhindered.
I already mentioned somewhere that last week I asked some old woman in Montenegro what she thinks about the election chances of Momir and Milo, and here’s what she said to me: “Sonny, the only sure thing is that those who don’t know how to write are for Momo, while drunkards are for Milo.”  “Why drunkards, old woman?”  “Because,” she said, “those who serve drinks are for Milo.”  When you look closer at the allegorical meaning of what the old woman said, you will see that, in fact, those who support Milo are people who are gainfully employed, people who believe that they hold their destiny in their own hands, or, at the very least, in their shops.  In Serbia such people are in the absolute minority.  Here a belief has been created according to which people think that our fate is either in the hands of God, or in the hands of the World Order, or in the palm of Slobodan Milosevic.

The spectacular dimensions of the disintegration of a society can probably be best seen in the absence of the ability to describe the situation realistically: no word is sufficiently strong to express the extent to which we are falling back in relation to a normal social system.  I suspect that recognizing one’s image will only follow once we get rid of all outside enemies, and they are getting ever closer, and we are discovering them ever faster: in the blink of an eye we went from the Albanians to the Montenegrins, and when the drunkards and the old woman’s allegories come in line, then we will decide about the key domestic question in Serbia, to which our elite already answered incorrectly once, believing that we would reach democracy as soon as we solve the national question.  Now that elite, which has mostly degenerated, is watching how our Emelda Marcos is trading in her sneakers for shoes made of crocodile leather, while Vojislav Seselj is the luck recipient of the teeth from the selfsame crocodile.