The Measure of Fear

The government of national unity is a way of protecting the regime from squabbles and mutual accusations between different political parties, but it cannot appear before its people just like that and say: it is true that we are about to lose Kosovo, but we are also broke, so go ahead and invade the dustbins.

In the past couple of days, the constitution of the state of Serbia has become so weak,  frail and sensitive to student graffiti, that it has become virtually unrecognizable. The whole construction could have been knocked down by one painted fist, had the guardians of order not intervened on time. The guardians of order obviously hadn’t heard that, during a recent visit to the earthquake affected areas, the president himself said that we should knock down everything which is unstable.

The president himself has offered, with his own fist, numerous examples of destructive competence and has become the only living classic, a poet of the fist, comparable with the greatest role models from the past. Among his trophies one can find a number of states, nations, institutions and prominent individuals, and if one looks at the collection objectively, it has to be said that the president has been unjustly accused of enforcing the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘the other’. Dealing with the latter category gave him international fame, but he destroyed the former much worse and with long term consequences.

How significant, in comparison to all this, is one painted or printed fist? If the intention was to attack the constitutional order, then the authors should have been told that the intended target doesn’t exist anyway. The judges who tried the students and the newspapers also must have had the need to inquire with their superiors about this order which they are supposed to protect: what is it and where can it be found and seen? Have the Serbian and the Federal constitution ever met, and agreed which is senior? Has the federal parliament, minus the representatives from Montenegro, been assembled under this constitutional order? Was the Lex Specialis part of this order? Is there maybe a secret constitution which gives Slobodan Milosevic a carte blanche? Is there a constitution which guarantees the right to destroy the University of Belgrade? Isn’t it clear that all these areas of the constitution have already been worked over by the above mentioned fist?

The key paradox lies in the fact that it is the new and notoriously unconstitutional Press Law which deals with the protection of the constitutional order. This must be a case of some dialectic confusion which the legal profession cannot grasp, and according to which, destruction is the best defense. Apparently the constitution carelessly guaranteed too many rights, and therefore could not protect itself from Slavko Curuvija and the four students. But, in order to understand fully why all this is happening right now we need even more paradoxes and dialectics. The paradox is that for years magistrates remained idle while people scribbled all kinds of messages on walls and organized a number of violent mass protests. This was the case even when Danica Draskovic mentioned bombs. However, Milosevic was alone then. Now, when Seselj has joined him in power and Draskovic is completing his apprenticeship, when together they control 98 percent of the seats in parliament and are bursting with national pride, all of a sudden they cannot stand a single voice of protest.

The answer is in the dialectic of victory and defeat. Namely, the Serbian regime, by pursuing a well thought out policy of antagonism towards the whole world, lined up a series of defeats, but walked away as the complete victor over its own people. Both of these facts have become unpleasantly obvious. That is why the painted fist and the quite unspecified invitation to resistance became so unbearable and dangerous.

When deciding to allocate power to Seselj, who successfully completed his apprenticeship, Milosevic must have reckoned that without the help from the champion of national and social demagogy, he wouldn’t be able to endure the responsibility of what lied ahead. Kosovo and gaping poverty. This seems to have been an accurate appraisal. Draskovic cannot swallow as much as Seselj, which is why he ended up with less power and responsibility.

However, when everything fell into place, there appeared a deficiency of internal enemies. The government of national unity does protect the regime from squabbles and mutual accusations between different political parties, but it cannot appear before its people just like that and say: it is true that we are about to lose Kosovo, but we are also broke, so go ahead and invade the dustbins. This is why enemies from within are so precious and irreplaceable. This time, however, the regime could not attack the previously exploited opposition consisting of Djindjic and Vesna Pesic, considering that for the sake of national consensus, both of them have been declared nonexistent.

So, the investigation and the quest unmistakably lead to the independent media, the university and the students who scribble on Belgrade’s beautiful facades. Had these traitors not invited NATO, there would have been no threats, Holbrooke would not have come here to hassle Milosevic, Kosovo would have remained Serbian, the Albanians would have disappeared, while the international monetary fund would have left the door of its safe wide open allowing the Serbs to take as much as they need. Therefore, the fines to which the accused have been sentenced do not fit these terrible crimes and only demonstrate the endless mercifulness, compassion and good will of the regime. However, anyone who thinks that the regime is overestimating the threat posed by the independent media, disobedient professors or resistance prone students, is making a serious mistake. The fear experienced by the regime is a measure of strength of any resistance movement, and it seems that this fear has increased lately. Behind the four students, the regime sees millions of others before whom it is culpable, and it knows better than anyone else exactly how big the culpability is. The problem with the independent press lies not in its circulation, but in the fact that people from within the regime believe what these papers say. And the painted fist has unsettled them precisely because it is the trademark of the regime, and could therefore act like some kind of Voodoo magic.