Reforms for the Fourth Time

When on February 17 they enter the emptied (Belgrade) Congressional Center, the SPS delegates will find on their desks congressional documents entitled "Reconstruction - Development - Reforms."  The reconstruction will probably be covered by Milutin Mrkonjic, alias Mrka, the director of the Direction for the Country's Reconstruction and Building.  As usual, Prime Minister Mirko Marjanovic will speak about the development, and the person who is going to speak about the reforms will probably do it under the slogan "we and the Chinese -- 300 million dollars."  After that, one of the "raiders" might attack the domestic traitors and NATO, and in the end, the chief organizer of the game, Slobodan Milosevic, after making a retrospection of what we have endured so far, will call to the party's unity and closing of ranks, because temptations are yet to come.  So, the congress is on.

"We are the winning team simply because we have among us those who attack and those who know how to organize a game," were the words of the prominent member of SPS, Raka Radovic, when he tried to explain the formula of SPS's election successes some time ago.  At the end of last year one of the raiders got rid of the very same Raka, who at the first moment could not believe that he was dismissed from the party.  After some time he characterized his dismissal as the "drilling of the party ranks before the Congress."  A few days ago Raka changed his mind completely - he now thinks that there are neither intelligent people nor good game organizers among the SPS ranks at all.
Raka was not the only one to be drilled and attacked.  The other prominent member of SPS who was removed from the party is Slobodan Jovanovic, once the president of the Belgrade City Committee and the man who could unmistakably see who among the journalists needed drilling.  Jovanovic was removed because he could not "fit into" the official love toward YUL, having had written an article calling to resistance against his party's coalition partner.  So, two very prominent members of the ruling party will not be among the 2,300 delegates at the Fourth Congress of SPS in the "Sava" Center."  They and some other still unknown dissidents will probably be mentioned in the statute commission report, which is going to reveal that as many as 170,000 new members joined SPS between the two congresses.  To tell the truth, different sources are giving different figures about the total number of this party's members, but the most popular figure is 600,000.

DRIVERS AND ASSISTANT DRIVERS:  "Sava" Center will be completely empty on the day of the Congress.  For days, the police are checking every corner of it, and examining the personal data of the people working in this building. When on February 17 they enter the emptied (Belgrade) Congressional Center; the SPS delegates will find on their desks congressional documents entitled "Reconstruction - Development - Reforms."  The reconstruction will probably be covered by Milutin Mrkonjic, alias Mrka, the director of the Direction for the Country's Reconstruction and Building.  As usual, Prime Minister Mirko Marjanovic will speak about the development, and the person who is going to speak about the reforms will probably do it under the slogan "we and the Chinese - 300 million dollars."  After that, one of the "raiders" might attack the domestic traitors and NATO.  In the end, the chief organizer of the game, Slobodan Milosevic, after making a retrospection of what we have endured so far, will call to the party unity and closing of ranks, because temptations are yet to come.  So, the congress is on.  This time, the president of SPS will not have to repeat too often the word "mobilization," which he usually uses on various occasions.  It is likely that a few days before this gathering, international community will have added 150 names to the list banning the traveling abroad to the people close to the regime.  In that way, the quarantine around the Belgrade establishment will be intensified.  At that time, the military maneuvers, not at all naïve, are planned to take place in Kosovo.  The opposition parties have also planned "maneuvers" of citizens dissatisfied with SPS's achievements, in front of "Sava" Center.  On top of that, the shadow of the federal defense minister's death will be hovering over the Congress.   This will be the sufficient outside pressure to make the ones inside manifest a stronger instinct of self-preservation, express their stronger loyalty to the apparatus and the leader, and simply say to one another - "I am non-existent without you, and naturally, without Sloba."
No speech and no paper at the Congress will mention that at the time of this party's inaugural congress (in July 1990), the national income amounted to 2,700 US dollars per capita, and that today it is three times lower.   At the inaugural congress, the party leaders were promising that in ten years time we would "catch up with" Sweden, while today, we are competing with Albania who will be next to last in Europe.  In their efforts to tell so many things about the country's reconstruction and development in only one day, the delegates will not even try to explain how SPS managed to become (and remain) the only ex-communist party that has remained in power since the Berlin Wall fall.  In the meantime, the Socialists experienced and endured so many failures, never paying the full price for them.  One of the explanations could be found in what Dr. Jovica Trkulja has recently said in Media Center:  "On the way to disaster, the Socialists have been holding the steering wheel in their hands, but the Serbian opposition has always been their assistant driver."

At the same gathering in Media Center, political analyst Dijana Vukomanovic from the Institute for Political Studies, contended that as far as SPS was concerned, this congress should be considered the fifteenth, rather than the fourth.  She claimed that although the previous eleven congresses had been held under the name of Alliance of Communists of Serbia (SK), this was one and the same party.  Any serious analysis can prove that historically, ideologically, in its organizational and its personnel policy, SPS represents the continuation of the former SK of Serbia.  This "old school" can be recognized in the technology of ruling, and can be seen even more clearly in the routine in which the conflicts within the party are being transformed into normal party operation.

In her short statement to "Vreme," Dijana Vukomanovic stressed that all conflicts within the party had taken place only on the lower level and had never been allowed to reach the top level.  No matter what kind of conflicts they are, casual or conceptual, they have been blocked before getting to the party top, and this is how the whole apparatus is operating.  Actually, this is the former communist school in action.  In doing this, the Socialists have shown an extraordinary skill in downplaying not only the internal problems, but also the blows coming from the outside.  

ELECTORAL GUILLOTINE:  At the previous, third congress of SPS, which was proclaimed the congress of "personnel renewal," more than two-thirds of the party's main board (MB) was replaced (out of 153 members of MB 102 were replaced, while only six of 26 members of the Executive Board kept their positions).  It became obvious later on that these personnel changes were not so important as they had seemed at first.  It has been proven on many occasions that Slobodan Milosevic is always playing with the same deck of cards, but that from time to time he likes to shuffle them a bit.  Before this congress the cards are being shuffled again, so that the most prominent members of the party are being appointed the heads of municipal organizations.  Branislav Ivkovic, who used to be the head of the Belgrade Socialists, has been appointed the head of the Vracar Socialists; Goran Percevic will lead the Stari Grad party organization; Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic will be in Cukarica; actor Bata Zivojinovic in Mladenovac.  In the majority of these municipalities the Socialists suffered a total catastrophe at the previous local elections.  

Dijana Vukomanovic contends that as far as the personnel policy is concerned, SPS is functioning according to the principle used at the time of Napoleon, which says "each soldier carries a general's baton under his coat." There is always a possibility of being promoted to a higher party position. And in that respect the socialists are more dynamic and open than the opposition parties.  They have persistently carried out the old communist practice of sending prominent Belgrade officials to the provincial Serbia to solve local problems there.  This kind of practice has given the local party members the sense of importance and strengthened their loyalty.  Milosevic himself entered the Serbian history in the similar way, he went to the field, to Kosovo Polje, and said the famous words: "No one is allowed to beat you."
In the days preceding the congress, many important party officials from Belgrade are traveling throughout Serbia.  Their goal is to inform the local members what the head office wants from them, rather than to give them the sense of importance.   In the recent weeks, the Belgrade officials have on many occasions influenced the choice of the chiefs of local boards, by imposing their own candidates instead of the ones who had already enjoyed the confidence of the local membership.  
Commenting on this policy, Dijana Vukomanovic stresses that this has nothing to do with awards or punishment, but that this is rather Milosevic's ability to hold his collaborators strongly and steadily together.

Contrary to many politicians of the opposition, who have mostly lost this ability, Milosevic still has the power to mobilize and demobilize his party's membership quite easily," Vukomanovic says.

WITHOUT A CRACK:   A long time before the Fourth Congress was scheduled, some opposition politicians had openly stated that according to their information, Socialist Party had had the serious inside cracks.   Unofficially, the main "candidate for Brutus" was Zoran Lilic, who was said to be likely to secede from SPS with the members of his faction.  One week before the congress, there is no trace of any cracks.  Here and there you can hear some grumbling among the membership (in Petrovac na Mlavi, Zajecar...), but everything boils down to the usual refrains and repetitions - reconstruction plus electricity, heating and bread plus foreign mercenaries plus Milosevic for the party president.  This does not mean that at the congress some personnel changes will not take place and that some of the prominent members will not be recycled.  Our experience with SPS says that almost everyone who has been dismissed from this party (and there are not many of them), has usually become marginal figure in serious politics.   Almost none of the former prominent Socialists has later on become a member of the strongest opposition parties, or taken with him a significant group of fellow party members.  Those who left Milosevic's field of influence have suddenly lost their former power.  For the time being, Nebojsa Covic is the only one who decided to form his own party and swim against Milosevic's  stream on a long-term basis.  It seems that he was a little hasty when he some time ago, announced that SPS and YUL would unite.  He also mentioned Srdjan Smiljkovic as the new general secretary of the united party.  If at one moment this was true, now the parties in question have obviously changed their minds.

According to what we know now, on February 17 one should expect a rather uneventful political gathering in "Sava" Center, not too interesting either for those who like SPS, or for those who are fed up with its rule.  On that day, SPS will not offer any kind of performance that might be understood as a fragmentation or disunity within this party.  The words like reconstruction, development and reforms have become stereotyped long ago and will hardly have any mobilizing impact on anybody.  The words like Kosovo and Montenegro are not very convenient to be mentioned at this congress, and will be mentioned only if they cannot be avoided.

Several days after the congress, it will be clear to everyone that the local elections will take place in Serbia in the spring.  Socialists think that everything else they have known for a long time.  They know that Clinton leaves at the end of the year, they are hoping that a "better Russian" might come, that we and the Chinese will make more than 300 million dollars together, that the opposition should be quarreling again...