With God's Help

"I am absolutely convinced that Yugoslavia will survive. Yugoslavia is a serious state facing such meager problems, that I dare act like a prophet at this moment. In the second half of next year, we will forget that we had ever raised the question of the state's survival", Federal President Momir Bulatovic said Tuesday night, shortly before he left the cocktail party in Belgrade's Sava Center, marking the 80th anniversary of Yugoslavia.

If Bulatovic's prophecy is to be trusted, all the woes troubling us now will be history next July at the latest. Kosovo's ethnic Albanians will probably give up the idea of seceding by force and of declaring an independent state. The KLA will surrender its weapons to Zoran Andjelkovic, the interim Kosovo premier, and probably ask him nicely to be its political representative. After establishing lasting peace, some 2,000 OSCE verifiers will return to their homes. Ibrahim Rugova and Adem Demaqi will start writing memoirs. The handful of national enemies at the Belgrade University and in the media will be eliminated from the scene once and for all. Milo Djukanovic, the Montenegrin president, will be the youngest retired politician in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Montenegro will again be a factor of stability rather than instability in the present Yugoslavia. Momir Bulatovic will finally be respected by both federal units, especially by the disciplined Montenegro that has ignored him and his government for so long. All that will happen by next July, folks. Of course anything is possible, especially if you disregard reality.

WITH GOD'S HELP: Unlike the well-informed, half-recognized federal premier who knows what's cooking, observers and reporters can hardly dare predict the future in a country where political principles and consistency come fewer than white ravens. Those who dare not predict what will happen in July 1999 can only turn to the not so transparent reality. Even so, it is quite apparent that the JUL and its staff are taking over virtually all the commanding positions in the country by accumulating power and giving an impression with every public appearance that the balance of power within the ruling coalition is changing on a daily basis.

Milovan Bojic, the Serbian vice-premier and one of the most prominent JUL members, noted recently in typical poetic fashion that "even God lends a helping hand to those moving up in the world". It seems that God has taken the form of the JUL for those moving up on Serbia's political ladder. It is very much the same with those going down, for the ever-present JUL is there to push them off the cliff with its strong hands. Well-informed circles say that all those who lost their positions in the state leadership or even within other parties (the Socialist Party, for example) had ties with the JUL in common. Allegedly, the JUL leadership instigated the dismissal of Jovica Stanisic, the former head of the state security service, the sacking of Colonel-General Momcilo Perisic, the former head of the Yugoslav Army General Staff, as well as the expulsion of Milorad Vucelic, the former SPS vice-president, from the ranks of the Socialist Party. At the same time, the JUL obviously gave a helping hand to those who replaced their sacked predecessors, namely the new head of the state security service, Radomir Markovic, and the new head of the Yugoslav Army General Staff, General Dragoljub Ojdanic. Both Markovic and Ojdanic have the reputation of being the JUL's "supporters" to say the least.

RENAISSANCE VERSATILITY: Milovan Bojic is perhaps the best example of the JUL's rise and all-round presence, as this party has become the key factor in each and every internal struggle for power. Bojic was not a ranking official when he left the Socialist Party. Today, he is probably the best reflection of the JUL's propulsive power. In less than a year, Bojic became the managing director of the Dedinje Institute for cardiovascular diseases, a member of the JUL managing board and main board, the Serbian Vice-Premier, the University Left Wing Committee (KUL) chairman, a member of the Serb negotiating team for Kosovo and the president of the JUL social welfare committee.

Bojic acquired all these positions as a deputy in the Serbian Assembly and the Federal Chamber of the Republics (upper house) as well as the chairman of the Belgrade Clinical Center’s Supervising Board. The matters he elaborates and the way he does it could lead one to believe that Bojic is a uniquely versatile character with a touch of Renaissance. "Those who never give up, live the longest" and "One needs to be great to keep flying high" are some of his most famous proverbs. A few weeks ago, he delivered speeches at the founding session of the JUL's University Committee, the Oncologists' Assembly and the anniversary of the Political Sciences Faculty in one day. Bojic played point-guard, shooting guard, power forward and center for his team in one day. Having him on the team is like having Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Shaquille O'Neal and Tim Hardaway in one player. Naturally, Serbian television followed Bojic wherever he went and marked every word he said, several times. A person of Bojic's rank in the SPS, if such a person exists in the first place, can only dream of the publicity he is getting. Vojislav Seselj and Tomislav Nikolic, the top ranking officials of the Serbian Radical Party and Serbian vice-premiers themselves, can only envy Bojic for the time he gets on air, although they are in charge of the information ministry. Even when they do appear on prime time news, they are nowhere to be seen when important decisions concerning the police and the army are being made. The JUL is in charge of that. Seselj and Nikolic are usually consulted later, when it's all over. Their opinion is sought after people close to the JUL have been appointed and given power.

The JUL and the Radicals have been involved in a kind of a love affair ever since last summer's first congress of the Left Wing Alliance, when some of its prominent members said that the left wing "shouldn't be confronted to the right wing or wage futile wars against it, but try to outsmart it and persuade it to join forces with the JUL". At this time, the left wing is neither fighting the right wing nor trying to persuade it to join forces with the left. Nebojsa Covic, the former Belgrade city mayor who was a top ranking SPS official for a long time, recently accused the JUL of abusing the Socialist Party's original ideas in the most blatant fashion. "It's easy for them to find a common language with Seselj as an extreme left wing alliance. The Socialist Party of Serbia is sandwiched between the JUL and the Radicals, as the latest developments have led to the elimination of the last remaining Mohicans who could criticize things that weren't good", Covic said.

As he knows only too well what is going on inside his former party, Covic noted that the socialists now holding the most powerful posts in the Serbian and the Federal government are now drifting towards the JUL. According to Covic, the SPS actually no longer exists as such, for it's only there as a front for various decisions and things for which it can no longer be held responsible. "The SPS has become the JUL's and the SRS's voting machine", Covic stressed recently.

Ever since the JUL was founded on 24 July 1994 and appeared on Serbia's political scene, many local observers wondered why and for whose benefit it emerged. More than a few people thought that Slobodan Milosevic allowed the JUL to preserve peace in his own house at the expense of causing hard times for his party. Ever since the JUL was founded, socialists not too fond of the "sister party" had to fear for their survival as SPS officials. Mihajlo Markovic was the first socialist official to speak against the JUL. He later got thrown out of the Socialist Party in less than 15 minutes and learned about it in the papers. All subsequent changes in the SPS ranks were almost identical, as socialist officials rose and fell depending on the level of their exaltation when the JUL was mentioned. Those who weren't thrilled enough went down.

Aleksandar Molnar told the magazine "Nova srpska politicka misao (new Serb political thought) that the JUL is actually an extreme right wing party, adding that the somewhat more moderate SPS, the SRS and Ibrahim Rugova's DSK are also right wing parties. According to Molnar, the JUL is more or less openly advocating a return to the old-fashioned socialist regime and the "effective destruction" of all opposing political organizations to ensure the unhindered functioning of informal power structures,  headed by Slobodan Milosevic and his wife Mirjana Markovic. The JUL, says Molnar, is playing on the idea of "good life in the old Yugoslavia", in which the left wing kept everything firmly under control. The strategy of glorifying the socialist past and blaming all the misfortunate events that struck the former Yugoslavia in the past decade on the multi-party system hasn't proved too successful, which prompted the JUL to infiltrate itself strongly into the SPS and encourage the party's anti-institutional policies. Molnar adds that the SPS-JUL-SRS coalition is only temporary as all three parties are, in his opinion, working against each other. "The JUL is the cancer of the SPS, while the Radical Party is probably the biggest threat for the Socialists. However, the SPS needs the Radicals at this moment to overcome the crisis caused by a fall in the voters' confidence at the last elections", Molnar said.

Both the SPS and the JUL ranks are all too aware of how temporary their coalition is. Some observers say that the JUL is not actually a serious political party, although many will argue that there isn't a more serious party in these parts at the moment. According to these opinions, the JUL is in fact a powerful group used to exert pressure when necessary, doing a hell of a job for Milosevic himself. Apparently, it is easier for Milosevic to use the JUL to restore discipline within his own party and keep the fundamental strongholds of his power. When the time comes, the JUL will be far more convenient than the weakened Socialist Party to deal a painful blow to Seselj and his Radicals.
Naturally, Montenegro and its Premier Milo Djukanovic are targets too. The fate of those moving up or going down the ladder could once again depend on the JUL. Those who believe that "only the great ones keep flying high" and see such a course of events as impossible are wrong, even though the JUL won only 0.1 percent of the vote in the Montenegrin elections. In this instance, lack of greatness is compensated with a few chosen individuals occupying the most crucial positions in the country.