The Bubble has Burst

At the time when POLITIKA was turned into a servant of the day-to-day politics, when it began to spread through former Yugoslavia the spirit of "merciless democracy", to issue countless warnings about a global anti-Serbian conspiracy, to recognize enemies of Serbia in every air molecule, to advocate economic blockades, to rate equally news about the fall of the Berlin Wall and awarding to Slobodan Milosevic the title of honorary citizen of a provincial town in central Serbia, the following joke circulated in Belgrade: Somewhere up in heaven (or hell), at a summit of former world leaders, Adolf Hitler lamented that one of his aides wasn't Zika Minovic, director and editor-in-chief of POLITIKA. Asked to explain, Hitler said: "In that case the world would not yet have learned that I lost the World War II!"

Several years later, that very same Zika Minovic, holder of the order for merit for turning a respectable daily into a rag and attracting mass support for a disastrous national project, has become almost the vanguard of the struggle for the freedom of speech and the media in Serbia. A man whose metamorphoses are impressive even for a butterfly, and whose political motto is "a mouse with one hole only cannot be a good mouse", has, for many, literally overnight grown into a symbol of resistance to a certain policy.

The very fact that Minovic, once a patron of journalism where nothing was barred if it went towards intoxication with national virtues, all of a sudden finds himself with those who speak about a disastrous policy that must "render account to people", speaks not only about the morality of POLITIKA`s director but much more as a paradigm of outworn and ill-advised nature of the current Serbian politics.

The Serbian government's attempt, motivated by alleged "concern for national property", to turn the POLITIKA publishing and broadcasting company into a public enterprise and turn some of its publications back into the rags they once were has made it possible to notice just how much Serbia is beginning to look like a "theater of the absurd" in which it is increasingly unclear if "we are all standing on our heads or it is the whole world doing so". Everything is possible in such theater. Possible for a man who was last year protected from strikers by army tanks placed in front of POLITIKA`s headquarters; possible for a government clearly bent on taking total control of POLITIKA so as to complete its grip on all the media to claim that it is doing so in order to "protect social property"; possible for workers who have already experienced the joy of having the government turning their firms into public enterprises to send telegrams of support (most of them for unplanned vacations) to their colleagues in POLITIKA, encouraging them to persevere; even possible for the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church to have his say in the matter.

The story about the transformation of POLITIKA into a public enterprise is just one chapter in a longer story on the transformation of entire Serbia into a ground where the regime has free rein to exercise a repressive policy, for which it is laying a groundwork through a whole series of different laws. These laws reflect most of all the anxiety of the ruling party about the gradual erosion of its grip on power, and its conduct begins to look like that of an actor late to leave an already vacated stage, stumbling on it and making obtrusive noises while the curtain is dropping, all too slowly. Milosevic`s team, which until recently measured its success only by the number of enemies it managed to create, is now faced not only by a nationalist and weak opposition and a tough international blockade, but also with a total failure of its policy of confronting with everyone and everything that comes from the federal level. The elections are approaching, the SPS`s (Socialist Party of Serbia) membership is dissipating, the leadership quarreling, and Milosevic himself has begun to maneuver and distance himself from his own party, while Panic will one day return to the country with new initiatives that won't proceed from war as the only way to settle all Serbia's troubles. Herein lies the unseemly haste to push through Parliament everything that could conceivably prejudice the result of the coming elections, set for autumn.

In all that haste the recapture of POLITIKA, which in the past few months began to recover some of the vertebrae in the spine which makes up the journalistic profession, has become the focus of media attention, but in its essence it's not very different from the taking of the University or the adoption of the legislation on Public Law and Order. The attempt to "restore order" in POLITIKA is no different from similar projects by Tudjman`s authorities to prevent Croatia`s principal media from an ownership transformation. Both power-holders know very well that social (state) ownership is a constant source of totalitarian impulses, but they clearly do not know that a society is among other things rated by the press that it can tolerate and afford.

The task to "bring POLITIKA back to its senses" was given to Premier Radoman Bozovic and the man who is entrusted with information, Minister Milivoje Pavlovic.

The instructions quite clearly came from the very top. Milosevic overtly treats Bozovic as Bozovic treats Pavlovic - a man who fulfills wishes. The unenviable job of executor went to minister Pavlovic, known as the writer of the "Book About Anthem" and so-called "White Book", which was "written" whiteout a single written line.

In the case of POLITIKA, everything indicated that it would have been smarter to go back after covering only half the way than to go on. But the

Government that has on countless occasions shown that instead of wisdom it prefers a card of relentlessness and intolerance, would have taken any retreat as a defeat.

POLITIKA`s defenders say the battle in Makedonska Street in central Belgrade (where POLITIKA headquarters are located) is one for democracy in Serbia, and that its fall would take along with it the fall of BORBA daily, Radio B-92 and Studio B. Should Bozovic succeed in becoming the "editor-in-chief of Serbia", much in Serbia's journalism that has gone over to the side of the truth instead of serving the needs of the day-to-day politics could go right back to square one. The entire POLITIKA affair was viewed by many as far more momentous than it is. Perhaps because many saw in it a chance to make gains. Milosevic counted on deciding the outcome of the November elections in July, while the opposition thought that by defending POLITIKA (whiteout tanks on this occasion) it could compromise and rock the government, hoping that ripple effect might spread to the leader's house in 33 Tolstojeva Street. Minovic himself by a sudden commitment to the freedom of speech and the media tried to lessen the effects of what he will never be able to escape from - his responsibility for the enthronement of political team heading straight to disaster and the organization of "spontaneous" popular support for the appearance of a "false dawn" in Serbia.

The only ones that cannot bank on any gains are Prime Minister Bozovic and cabinet minister Pavlovic. The fate of executers in politics is that they almost never capitalize on their efforts.

The ownership transformation of POLITIKA in whose name the freedom of press is being suppressed will never be able to bring back the time Hitler longed for in the joke to Bozovic and his minister. Even Minovic himself, as he used to be in his "better days" when he began to create the myth of the Leader would today prove incapable of filling the craters left behind by the current Serbian policy in its advance. It's just too late.

In the words of minister Pavlovic himself: "The bubble of lies has burst and the truth is slowly beginning to flow out".