Two Aces on the Table

"We've done all we can and now the fate of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia rests exclusively in the hands of the Belgrade majority. If we easily gave up the agreed functions of the president of the new state, this will not be the case with the position of prime minister. We have offered two leading men from our party. We will see what the answer will be and what arguments the Federal Parliament will use to invalidate our proposals. On this will depend our future action, i.e. we will define our further participation in the constituting of the new state".

These words were said by a member of the Democratic Party of Socialists of Montenegro to VREME after the decision of the main board of this party to put forward Milo Djukanovic and Momir Bulatovic as candidates to the post of federal prime minister. This decision was made unanimously and it looks as if the opinion prevails in DPS that a negative response would give the moral right to withdraw from the newly created state.

It is clear that Bulatovic was not bluffing when, after the election of President Cosic, he announced that he would insist on the honoring of the Constitution to the letter. What is more, he himself is aware that an equal division of power in the federal leadership is a precondition for political survival of the storm that could break out in Montenegro. The secretariat of his party immediately tried to neutralize the bitterness of the Montenegrin people about the appearance of Vojislav Seselj and Borisav Jovic in the Federal Parliament by its announcement that it would persist in the precise application of the Constitution. It was agreed then that rejection would be a visa for escape from the alliance in which they already feel unequal.

Bulatovic and Marovic were deceived, states a member of the leadership who wishes to remain anonymous, and this is why they so easily gave up the presidential seat. The candidacy of Mr. Panic as Prime Minister was supported only as long as Marovic figured as a future president. Even after this they didn't have much against an exception being made this time. Supposedly, they were informed that businessman Panic had promised an injection of four billion dollars into the federal coffers. On the other hand, considering that Panic is very close to Bush, the Montenegrins are convinced that his election as prime minister would make easier a lifting of the sanctions. We, however, have discovered that this is not the case. The doubt in the story of an ally in the Belgrade regime escalated after Jovic's appearance in Parliament - a doubt present since the so-called Hague turning point.

The dissatisfaction and division in the Montenegrin leadership provoked by the behavior of its Belgrade ally and the election of Cosic is impossible to hide. Mr. Slobodan Vujacic, member of the Montenegrin Presidency, made a short comment on Cosic's inauguration: "I am not surprised by his election because a big game is being played". This is accompanied by an increase in the number of Montenegrin citizens offended by the fact that the head of state is a man who openly, on Montenegrin soil, negated the existence of a Montenegrin nation. The entire Montenegrin opposition, without abandoning its political program, has found itself with the task of breaking the present policy of Montenegro to help bring about a lifting of the sanctions and threats against the peoples of Montenegro and Serbia.

The government, with its usual dose of arrogance, announced that the acceptance of the initiative to form a government of civil unity would at the same time be an acknowledgment of the fact that the present government had lost its legality and legitimacy, that it was incompetent in carrying out the duties. It is questioned whether a government of civil unity would have the legitimacy and legality to do any better and whether it could guarantee a speedier lifting of the sanctions. It looks as though the drama is just beginning.