News of the Day

Thursday, December 17: The Yugoslav border guards prevented about 2646 illegal border crossings this year, and in about 95 serious incidents in the fringe area between FR Yugoslavia and Albania, 14 people were killed and 29 border guards were more or less severely wounded.

Friday, December 18: FRY is the most precarious country for investors on the European continent, and among the transition countries, only Tajikistan seems to be worse, as a research of the leading world financial journal Euromoney demonstrated. On a list of the riskiness of the world’s 180 countries, which Euromoney published in its December issue, FRY took 168th place. In relation to the previous rating (December 19th) Yugoslavia's position had fallen 21 places.

Saturday, December 19: Since the Milosevic-Holbrooke agreement (October 13th), according to the information revealed in the media in both the Serbian and Albanian languages, 78 people were killed and 27 people were wounded.

Sunday, December 20: The Yugoslav Olympic Committee chose the basketball player, Dejan Bodiroga and the athlete, Olivera Jeftic as this year's top sportsmen.

Monday, December 21: The NATO's supreme commander Wesley Clark informed the chief of the general staff of Yugoslav Army, General Dragoljub Ojdanic in Belgrade, with a "very clear message of the international association and NATO that the authorities in Belgrade ought to fulfill their duties regarding the situation in Kosovo", the spokesman of NATO in Brussels, Jamie Shay said to the Beta new agency.

Tuesday, December 22: Minister of Finance in Serbia, Borislav Milacic stated that due to a lack of funds, the Law on Special Rights and Obligations of chosen individuals will not be put into effect until April next year.

Wednesday, December 23: The Federal Constitutional Court gave an opinion that Montenegro's Law on Election of Federal Representatives is unconstitutional.
 
 

Efficiency
At  last, the notorious Law on Information, which was challenged by various submitters of the petition concerning 25 articles, which constitutes the third of the whole number, arrived on the agenda of the Constitutional Court of Serbia. The Constitutional Court  forwarded a great deal of that matter to the Federal Court, for some things it proclaimed itself as incompetent, for others, it requested the answer from the National Parliament, so that the law, just the way it is now, is still valid, and will be until further notice.

The Constitutional Court of Serbia, however showed certain efficiency. It announced as unconstitutional the decree which regulates recourse for  holidays of the employed in the state service on the level of an average salary in Serbia, since the law shows that that recourse should be determined on the level of the triple average salary in the Republic. Thus, let someone say that God had not first created the beard for himself.

Quote of the Week
"Vietnam and Yugoslavia are geographically quite separate, but are ideologically quite connected."
Petar Gracanin, member of the SPS delegation, upon returning from a trip to Asia, where ideological connections with the Communist Party of Vietnam were being strengthened

Djordje Dozet, former judge and officer in the Yugoslav National Army, presently a lawyer in Belgrade, speaks in the magazine Svedok about the process which is being conducted against unknown perpetrators of war crimes in Vukovar: "What I don't like in the whole matter is the following: does the tribunal, by accepting the military prosecutor's proposal for undertaking specific investigative actions, accept that war crimes actually occurred there, and that the eventual conducting of a criminal procedure is under the jurisdiction of the Martial Court in Belgrade.  This means that the perpetrator is a member of the military - a member of the First Army.  If such evidence exists, then a known perpetrator also exists, so that it is unnecessary to undertake specific investigative actions, for a full investigation is in order.  If there is no such evidence - then there is no investigation and there are no specific investigative actions."

Srecko Mihajlovic, researcher in the field of sociology at the Institute for Social Sciences in Belgrade, speaking for the Blic daily, describes the importance of the media for the political party scene in Belgrade in the following terms: "The walrus type of parties are SPS and SRS, having a relatively small number of educated members and an enormous body.  Parties such as DSS, DS and GSS I would call tadpoles, with their heads having high concentrations of educated members, with small support from uneducated people.  Tadpoles can best communicate with voters through electronic media, but are in an unequal position because that type of communication has been denied to them.  That is why their battle for voters is in fact a battle for the media."

Dusan Mitevic, President of the Executive Committee of ICN, announced that the biggest drug factory in Yugoslavia is under threat of closure.  According to the Blic daily, Mitevic stated that assaults by various investigative and tax services which, according to some black scenario, are withdrawing money from the factory’s account, fall into the worst segment of the arsenal for destroying the leading drug manufacturer.  "Such moves by the state threaten to leave 3500 workers without bread, and if the contract had been respected, we would have realized profits of 320 million dollars.  We won’t give up like sheep," he stated, announcing that he would release to the public everything that all these years has hindered and destroyed the domestic drug industry - who imports what drugs, who are the owners of those small factories cropping up like mushrooms and which are just packing drugs.  In the end, Mitevic added that, according to Milan Panic's order, ICN will deliver drugs to the home addresses of anyone who contacts the factory directly.

Violence

Economic Policy,  a weekly magazine with a long and renowned tradition, organized and registered on time as a private enterprise, has, according to a decision of the FRY Government, been attached to the wing of Borba, or more precisely to a state enterprise, which is a legal violence equal to the idea of Momir Bulatovic wandering into somebody else's house and stealing the washing machine. Thus, it is a pure robbery.

When the Federal Government invaded the Nasa Borba daily, it had, at least, the formal excuse that the owner's transformation of that newspaper, founded within the patronage of the Borba house too, has not been published in the Official Newspaper. On this occasion, even that unnecessary act of formalism was avoided. They simply trespassed on somebody else's property.