Let's All Go and Vote!

At the time when this article is being written (Wednesday, March 1) the opposition parties representatives are having their fourth meeting in the premises of the Democratic Center (DAN) discussing various forms of exerting pressure on the regime.  This meeting aroused expectations that it might become a turning point in the activities of the opposition parties, since so far, their activities boiled down to just sitting and talking.  The ordinary (or let's say "non-partisan") people have already started to criticize them stressing that it is time to show President Milosevic that the opposition does exist in Serbia.

There have been three meetings so far, and already at the first one, which was hosted by SPO on January 10, the opposition parties reached an agreement requesting special elections on all levels to take place by the end of April of this year.  It was also agreed to have a big protest rally in March, which was supposed to be a manifestation of the support to the positive program of the opposition, rather than a demonstration of the will for confrontation.

Some ten days ago, SPO's spokesman Ivan Kovacevic stated that on March 9 a big rally would be organized, but on the same day the SPO president's adviser, Miladin Kovacevic, corrected this statement by saying that the decision on the rally and on other activities of the opposition would be made by consensus.  So in his subsequent statements, Ivan Kovacevic has been sticking to this version.  At his February 29 press conference he stated that the opposition parties "will probably decide on the rally," that for SPO the best date would be March 9, but that SPO would not insist on it and the decision would be made by consensus.  

So far two parties have spoken against March 9 as the potential date of the rally -- Zarko Korac's Social-democratic Union (with a remark that his party will respect majority's will) and Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), (which while stressing the appreciation of the previous agreement to hold the rally in March), expressed certain reserves about March 9, because the regime might use this symbolic date for further deepening of the crisis and even confrontations.  By bypassing this date, the opposition would take off its shoulders the responsibility for any potential incidents.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR: The regime on its part has been trying to "break the opposition's game."  The rulers have refused all proposals for changing the elections conditions.  In the meantime, SPO, the party that had initiated these changes in the parliament, has temporarily left the parliament; all negotiations on possible alteration of the election conditions have been frozen; the regime has intensified its oppressive campaign against the opposition, media and free public with a reiterated justification that the war against Yugoslavia continues through other means, etc.  

In the meantime, in its pre-congress reshuffling of the cards, SPS has sent its most-authoritative people to the local level -- to wage the battle for the cities.  A series of parallel actions has been used to cover up the general crisis in the regime leadership, characterized by their increased isolation by the West, a scandalous inactivity regarding the assassination attempt on Vuk Draskovic, the incapability to uncover the assassins even of the Defense Minister, the absence of any kind of will to remind the prime ministers and ministers of their moral and political obligations to resign after having been involved in some disastrous affairs and scandals...  On the contrary, rejoicing over the opposition's wrong evaluations that it would disintegrate and disappear during the winter, and encouraged by the fact that it somehow managed to round up its poor balance sheets and by the fact that it is still in control of the situation, the regime is now trying to make an impression of making a furious assault wearing a mask of an imminent tyranny.  A part of this scheme consists of the harassment of the opponents.  So on February 29, SPO's spokesman Ivan Kovacevic was taken to the police quarters for an information-rendering talk, the same had previously happened to Miladin Kovacevic, while the police tried to take three other activists of this party to its headquarters for the same purpose.  In the meantime, the regime initiated a political and legal prosecution of the President of Nova Demokratija, Dusan Mihajlovic.  

Thus, incapable of resolving its own problems, the regime has been harassing and attacking the opposition...

TO BE OR NOT TO BE: The current "to be or not to be" ruminating of the opposition might have come as a result of the last year's traumas, the quarrel over the August 19 rally which almost led to a confrontation between Djindjic's and Draskovic's supporters, the doubts about whose rally would be stronger "ours" or "theirs," and the fear that the people will not be too willing to take part in these "public works."  But, it might also be the sign of a positive "social lesson."  The last year's series of AFC's protests, based on wrong evaluations that that the post-war disappointment and the growing poverty would take the people to the streets, that the regime would not be able to make the ends meet and would surrender without putting up any fight, has not rendered big political results.

After his victory over Slobodan Vuksanovic at his party's presidential elections, Zoran Djindjic criticized his party's Belgrade committee for not investing more energy into the protests, blaming its members for the failure of the 1999 protests in Belgrade.  During the preparations for this opposition summit, only several tens of the Belgraders protested for 159th time on February 26, 2000.  This was a group of protesters led by the former student leader, and the current Democratic Party activist, Cedomir Jovanovic, who continued their protests in Belgrade even after the official end of the SFC demonstrations on December 18, 1999.  They represent the aftermath of the drama that tested the regime's determination to remain in power.  It was proven, however, that this is not Czechoslovakia where the regime got scared from the little bells, and that the ruling nomenclature in Serbia, although isolated and scared, compensates the absence of a way out with an increased desire for remaining in power.

This season, however, the opposition gives an impression of a little more consolidated group, let's say a group with a better expert service.  It has no interest in giving the regime a motive for some desperate violence.

ENCOURAGEMENT:  Whether they want it or not, the opposition parties will have to use the only institution they now have at disposal, i.e. the city square, which is the birthplace of the Athens and other democracies.    The waves of the 1991, 1992, 1993, 1996/7 demonstrations mostly brought only partial results, the ones that can be expected from massive protests.  The Vidovdan rally lasted for three weeks; the rally defending Vuk and Dana Draskovic in 1993 lasted one month; while the 1996/97 citizens protests lasted for 88 days and the student ones for 117 days.  More often these protests were marked with an atmosphere of revolt and confrontations, rather than with victorious eroticism.  The latter feeling was almost achieved during Panic's short pre-election campaign in 1992.  Led by its six-times beaten leaders (in '90,'92, '93, 97), today the opposition must create a positive campaign in order to attract its potential voters to the balloting places and reduce their abstinence to the smallest possible measure, knowing that the ruling coalition will use a dirty campaign against it in the media, and that the usually compact, and now somewhat shaken supporters of the regime will obey the "message from above" and come to the elections.  

The key of the election result is held by the abstinents who make up a group equal to the biggest opposition "parties."  The number of the abstinents in Serbia can vary up to 700,000.  The people are discouraged to vote not only by the regime's propaganda ("there is no use to vote, they are all the same," or the central Belgrade parties are "no good"), but also by the so-far-used problematic strategy of the opposition.  On two occasions, in 1992 and 1997, the opposition groups called on the citizens to boycott the elections, but they were not successful in this method of political blackmail, mostly due to the fact that the majority of the citizens considered elections as the expression of their loyalty to the country.  Threats with a boycott have accompanied all the elections since 1990 and were probably to be blamed for making some of the opposition voters confused.  Now a consensus has been reached that one of the successful formulas is to encourage the citizens to vote.  Precisely as in the Russian presidential elections, we in Serbia will know the final result even during the elections, on the basis of the number of the people that voted.  According to some evaluations (Vuksanovic, DS) since 1997, 480,000 young people have acquired the right to vote.  This means that the main slogan in the coming months should proclaim: "Let's all go and vote!"