Momir, Where's Your Base

A man who is capable of putting together in only a few hours a project of such importance as the program of the Federal Government in a country with a totally exhausted economy, to carry out necessary consultations with heads of political parties and to get their support, to chose ministers, and at the same time to become Premier only one day after he was appointed - certainly deserves far greater respect and admiration than the one the President of FR Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, expressed in his special statement, when he said that the newly appointed President of the Federal Government is "unquestionably a person with the highest reputation in Montenegro".  A man with such capacities and political skill, capable of forming a government in six hours (malicious people say six minutes) and doing what took Mirko Marjanovic six months to do in Serbia, is obviously a political actor of such stature that he can simply not be measured by any Montenegrin yardsticks.

In any case, thanks to Slobodan Milosevic, today in FRY there are two governments, which qualify for the Guinness Book of World Records.  The one headed by Marjanovic was in fact officially nominated for the Guinness Book of World Records by the President of the Social Democrat League of Vojvodina, Nenad Canak.  The new Federal Government headed by Momir Bulatovic also appears to be heading for a Guinness World Record, since according to every logic the formation of a government and the synchronization between different interests of republics is incomparably more difficult and delicate than the job of constituting the government of a republic.

THROUGH THE NEWSPAPERS:  Bulatovic himself explained his coming to the position of Premier as above all a reflection of his desire to offer a contribution to the maintaining of a joint state and to equality between the republics.  He is obviously expected to work hard in the future on "inflating authority" from the level of the republics to the federal level, which is actually the old plan hatched in the Milosevic Family Workshop.  Bulatovic's coming to this position could also be interpreted in this way: the rift between the former DPS and Milo Djukanovic's emergence form Milosevic's sphere of influence of has resulted in the braking of the ranks not only in Montenegro, but also on the federal level.  The appointment of Bulatovic to the position of Federal Premier, as was observed by the political scientist, Ph.D. Ognjen Pribicevic, at a recent forum held in the Belgrade Media Center, represents an obvious attempt by Milosevic to maintain unity in ranks at least at the federal level.  Djukanovic and his supporters would not have any access to or influence on decision-making in the federal state in the future.  Earlier they at least knew through their ministers that there is talk in the Federal Executive Assembly about monetary devaluation.  In the future they will have to read about it in the newspapers.  However, this is forcing the entire state into something that does not exist even in the Guinness Book of World Records.  Decisions by the Federal Government will only be effective on the territory of Serbia, that is to say outside of Montenegro, with it only being a matter of who can endure longer.  Thus Bulatovic himself, who does not enjoy the official support of his Republic, could live to see at least half of Montenegro shouting that which his supporters shouted about other politicians during the "anti-bureaucratic revolution" - "Momir, where's your base!?"

SAME CABINET: A fact remains for books of world records that in less than 48 hours FRY lost an old premier and got a new one from the ranks of a newly created party which had not yet participated in any election.  The old premier was sent packing with shouts from the members of Bulatovic's Socialist People's Party (SNP) that he did not pay enough attention to economic reforms and interests of the federal state.  However, the new cabinet of Premier Bulatovic remains completely unchanged - with all those ministers who lead national economic policy with Kontic in the past years.  The new Government only changed a few ministers who are members of DPS, with those who joined it, such as the former Director of the Aluminum Works of Podgorica, Danilo Vuksanovic, not exactly being economic bright-lights of the sort that Kontic lacked.  It could be more readily said that they are strong on the "patriotic front" and that the new Government, which will later most probably be "refreshed" by Seselj's Radicals (where only will Seselj find so many Radicals for so many governments), will pay far more attention to the patriotic wellbeing of the nation than to its economic survival.

The way in which the President of FRY, Slobodan Milosevic explained Bulatovic's candidacy (as "unquestionably a person with the highest reputation in Montenegro", "who enjoys great support from the people of Montenegro", "an uncompromising fighter against crime and corruption") could soon stand in the way of Bulatovic himself.  For instance, were it to happen that the politically most loyal Montenegrin were not to win in the election in Montenegro, the President of FRY himself could be made a liar.  In DPS they claim that internal analyses in the Momir Bulatovic's party indicate that he does not enjoy the "highest reputation" in SNP itself, that is to say that representatives of this party Predrag Bulatovic and Zoran Zizic enjoy better reputations in the party.

WHY THE HURRY:  Commenting for VREME on Milosevic's explanation of why he nominated Bulatovic for the new Premier, a political scientist from Podgorica, Srdjan Darmanovic, states that the nomination resembles many previous ones signed by the same hand.  "All those who Milosevic appoints are people who submit totally to him, and they know that they are unimportant, and are only there while they are useful.  That is why such explanations have an element of sarcasm in them - one asks oneself whether Milosevic is really praising the person whom he is nominating, or whether he is slightly laughing at him.  In Bulatovic's case there could also be questions about unjust hurry.  Several months ago Momir Bulatovic lost one election in Montenegro (admittedly by a close margin), and in ten days he will be facing another one in which, according to all serious predictions, he will probably not win.  That is why the statement about the 'unquestionably highest reputation' should have been reserved for later," states Srdjan Darmanovic.

Darmanovic otherwise doubts that the real reason for the speedy appointment of the new Premier, which overstepped the Constitution, lies in Milosevic's desire to strengthen Bulatovic's position going into the election.  According to Darmanovic, this would be too simple for the President of FRY, who beyond the more transparent objectives always has other hidden, but more important ones.  Those more dangerous intentions which Milosevic has often come later, and in this instance they do not have to boil down to instituting martial law.  "Personally I do not believe that it is possible to institute martial law in Montenegro, at least not according to textbooks where someone in Belgrade would sit down and decide upon that.  The existing Government in Montenegro holds in its hands mechanisms of resistance for standing up to such imposition of political will.  The question is whether those mechanisms are powerful enough to resist situations which are more dangerous than the one in January of this year, after the presidential elections.  Beside the decisiveness of such eventual resistance, the most important thing for the further development in the situation in Montenegro is the stance of the international community," states Darmanovic.

In the past days the political circles in Montenegro took just as much notice of those signals as they did of news coming from official Belgrade.  To the question of one foreign journalist as to what sort of support he can count on from the international community in the event of a possible confrontation with Belgrade, the President of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, stated: "Montenegro already enjoys the support of the international community, and I am certain that this sort of support will not be lacking in the future.  Still, I hope that reason will prevail in political circles of Belgrade, that responsibility for maintaining a joint state and peace in it will be awakened, and that we will not need international help for maintaining stability in Montenegro."

Last Tuesday, when Milosevic promoted Momir Bulatovic into the new Premier, Richard Miles, Charge d'Affairs of the American Embassy, was in Podgorica where he took Madeleine Albright's letter to Djukanovic.  "What is written in this letter" was the main question which was being posed in Podgorica in the days that followed, where there is a similar atmosphere of horror which existed leading to the previous elections, and where there is a continuous manufacture of half-truths, lies, accusations and "dossier-journalism".

Thus, there is only the wait for May 31 and the result of the Montenegrin parliamentary elections which, more than any previous ones, will determine the future fate of this country.  In a country in which institutions of the system have not been functioning for some time, everything is possible - from loading guns, to arrests of political rivals, to long-term political blackmail and rifts between Belgrade and Podgorica.  The least likely of all things is martial law.  As a very practical man, Slobodan Milosevic would certainly not lose energy over instituting something which already exists for some time.

Should he exclusively stick to what Slobodan Milosevic prescribes for him in the most powerful position in the federal state, Momir Bulatovic could realize some of his youthful dreams in the position of Federal Premier.  He used to want, as he wrote in his autobiographic book Less Than a Game - More Than a Life, to work as a waiter and to study economics.  Soon, according to his admission, he got "a slight injury of the spine" in his job as a waiter.  The position of Federal Premier, at least up to now, required precisely that: a lot of waiting, a little bit of economics of the sort "what did we have so far", and of course, a very flexible spine.