Mace for the Janissaries

As soon as Slobodan Milosevic stepped in the "Sava" Congress Center on February 17 and its glass door was shut behind him, some 1,500 of his freezing supporters, who had been brought by buses from all over Serbia, suddenly stopped cheering "Slobo, Slobo," and began to disperse.  According to the SPS Congress scenario, the bus people were supposed to stand there only until the president passed by, and other participants arrived to the "Sava" Center (mostly in the "Audi" cars).  These 1,500 people gathered in the rain, whose duty was a spontaneously organized welcome to their leader, had no idea that they were worth "several tens of thousands of people."  At the "Sava" Center entrance Milosevic was met by the new president of the Belgrade Socialists, Ivica Dacic, who heatedly claimed that the presence of  "several tens of thousands of people" on the first day of the Congress, was another proof of the party's strength and of the fact that Serbia was a small country with a great leader.   After that, the congress could have begun.

Everything else that happened at the SPS congress that day passed in the similar atmosphere of self-deception, blown-up figures, untrue victories, and logic that anything is possible, particularly if you ignore the reality.  This was the congress of the part of Serbia, which had been used to telling "fairy tales rather than figures" and whose figures were often coming from fairy tales.  That day in the "Sava" Center Serbia looked more prosperous than ever, while the Socialists seemed more distant from the reality than ever before.  This aloofness of theirs and their inability to grasp that Serbia of today is a country of the suffering, the forthcoming poverty, fear and uncertainty, might very soon considerably disturb their plans to remain in power forever.

PROMISES:  It started with Dacic's allegations about the number of supporters in front of the "Sava" Center, and continued with the assertions and outlines of the matters which the Socialists and their coalition partners were the only ones capable to see and say at this moments.  Talking about  guests at the congress, they introduced them as the biggest and the most influential political forces and leaders in the world, as the mankind's conscience and initiators of the global resistance to the "new world fascism," (although they belonged to the small, non-influential and almost completely unimportant parties and movements).  In front of the guests the Socialists announced once again what RTS has been telling us every day - that Serbia was victorious in the last year's war.  They characterized their congress, which served for the closing of the SPS ranks in anticipation of what was coming, as one of the biggest and the most important gatherings in the world in the last few years.

In their "21 projects for the 21st century," they mentioned the building of the projects that have been planned to be built or have been under construction for the last twenty years (like for example the Belgrade railway junction).  They were quite seriously talking about the construction of the Nis-Pristina-Podgorica highway, while Prime Minister Mirko Marjanovic claimed that in the year of 2005 the annual income would amount to US dollars 3,000 per capita.  No one, however, noticed that this was the annual income in Serbia in the year of 1990, when SPS had its first founding congress.   For the year of 2020, they planned the annual income of US dollars 10,000 per capita, having stressed that this dynamic development has already commenced "placing us among the most successful countries of the Central and Eastern Europe, and taking us on the way to join the leading group of the medium-developed countries."  The majority of speeches, including Milosevic's, too, contended that the opposition did not exist in Serbia.  Having said that, they spent a considerable amount of time attacking and mentioning the opposition that did not exist and was not worth mentioning.  In the end, they concluded that we were the most courageous people in the world.

MANPOWER:  As "Vreme" predicted, the congress did not bring any significant personnel changes.  Slobodan Milosevic was once again elected the president with Kim-Il-Sungovian percentage; i.e., he got 2308 out of 2309 possible votes.  Gorica Gajevic kept her position of the party general secretary, and during the voting for the new members of the quite broadened Main Board of the party, she received the biggest number of votes.  (In her congress address Gajevic stated that SPS had 700,000 members, while the congress documents mention 630,000 members altogether).  Mirko Marjanovic was elected the new, and at the same time the only vice-president of the ruling party.  This position had been previously held by Nikola Sainovic, Zivadin Jovanovic, Zoran Lilic and Dusan Matkovic, who were now transferred to the SPS Executive Board.  According to some analyses, by opting for only one vice-president Milosevic wanted to prevent faction battles within the party.  Other analyses of these personnel changes contend that this might be the sign that Mirko Marjanovic will soon leave the office of the Serbian government Prime Minister.  The several-month-long preparations of the congress prevented any kind of spectacular personnel changes at the congress itself, as well as a possibility that this congress might send a signal about any disagreement or disunity within the party.  The burden of the renovation and reconstruction, as well as the elections (if they take place at all), will obviously fall on the shoulders of the tested party activists from Milosevic's old deck of cards.     

LOCAL LEVEL: The most significant changes had happened on the local level before the congress, since more than a half of the former municipal officials were replaced.  This heralded SPS's ambition to be less restrained and mild in the future toward the opposition that holds the power in the biggest cities in Serbia.  A raid on the cities seems to have become the foremost post-congressional task of the Socialists, and at this moment it is more realistic than a possible raid on Montenegro.  However, what remained unclear is whether Dacic's message "we will liberate Belgrade" means a prompt scheduling of local elections, or the introduction of a kind of state of emergency and compulsive management over the cities where the opposition is in power.  Judging by the vehemence of the campaign, which the ruling coalition has been carrying on against the local authorities for days, one can hardly believe that the end of the story on the local level will take place as late as in the fall.  The story on criminalized local authorities should have its logical end only in new elections or arrests.  

THE RHETORIC:  Precisely like all previous SPS congresses, this fourth one also had a bit of an atmosphere of the former communist celebrations, and was marked only by one man, the great and untouchable leader.  This congress differed from the previous ones only in one thing -- the rhetoric of the ruling party was substantially altered.  The congress's working title was "Reconstruction, Development, Reforms," but quite different contents and slogans predominated in the discussions.  A foreign newspaper was quite right in characterizing the congress as full of spite and hatred.  Slobodan Milosevic, who so far had been very careful in his public speeches to be aloof and look upon everything from a ruler's lofty place, this time made a quite malevolent speech, which for a long time will be the subject of many reactions and interpretations, particularly by the opposition.   At any rate, many people understood Milosevic's speech and rhetoric as an open threat to anybody opposing the official Serbian policy.  A good part of Milosevic's speech was devoted to his attempts to justify his party's coalition collaboration with the Radicals.  Similar to Vojislav Seselj, who contended at the Radical Party congress that the division into lefts and rights would have to wait for the normalization of the political situation in the country and insisted on the division into "patriots" and "traitors," Milosevic, too, called on the lefts and rights to forget and condone their program and party differences at this moment.  The Socialists have adopted Seselj's rhetoric (and his lists, too), to use it in their future battle with the "fifth column," even showing certain regret that the leader of the Radicals had been the first and more loud in using it.  They have accepted the YUL-Radical thesis that NATO's prolonged aggression on FRY is currently under way, and that they have to defend their ruling position at all costs. Contrary to Seselj, who at his congress was again creating the Greater Serbia stretching Serbia's western borders as far as Karlobag, Milosevic this time spread his geographic molds from the Timok to the Drina river, not mentioning his previous (favorite) coordinates of Horgos and Dragas.

THE OPPOSITION: Milosevic's half-an-hour-long speech had a bit of everything in it: his attempts to justify why we have not yet reached the phase Mirko Marjanovic had promised to us within the next twenty years, his indicative wooing of the refugees who might soon become a new "electoral machine," his obvious ignorance of the world political trends, his ambition to make Belgrade the capital of the resistance to the new world order, but also his ambition to keep things as they are in the domestic scene and never to change them.  Many people noticed Professor Mirjana Markovic's hand in his speech, particularly in the part in which Milosevic spoke of the opposition with extreme contempt.  This part of his speech and his calling the Serbian opposition the "yanissaries," its leaders the "moral nobodies" and all his opponents one big, non-existing nothing, could indirectly mean that the ruling coalition does not have a real topic for the elections.  Since 1990 until today, an average Serbian voter has not been in the position to put his hand in his pocket before going to the balloting place and ask himself why it is empty.  At all previous elections Milosevic had been able to force some other topics upon the voters and avoid any themes in connections with the everyday life.   

The fourth congress of the Socialists ended as it has been expected - the ruling party demonstrated unity, closed its ranks, justified in front of its own membership why they had to be with Seselj, reconfirmed its task and its topic for the coming elections and avoided to reply why the country was getting smaller as the leader was getting greater.  The only unexpected thing the Socialists did at the congress was their opting for the additional spreading of fear.  Perhaps they did it due to their own feeling of being jeopardized.  It seems that the best commentary on what is in store for Serbia after this gathering, came a few days ago from the DSS leader, Vojislav Kostunica, who said that the situation in Serbia would certainly be more difficult not only for the citizens, but also for Milosevic's Socialists. 

Among other things heard at the congress was the statement that the Serbs are the most courageous people.  Obviously the time is coming in which every one of us will need a lot of courage.