Friends Have Fled to Other Parties

Analyzing the results of the presidential, federal and republic elections, Mira Markovic today admits that she didn’t expect such a course of events. The left oriented parties, as she herself says, “won the elections and lost power”.

“I was surprised by the results of the presidential elections. I allow myself even today to say that I am fairly competent to assess the public mood. I myself had actively taken part in the election campaign and I had a picture of the voters’ mood. That picture spoke in favor of a result which was different from the one which was announced on October 6. However, I might have been wrong; that the public mood, as far as the president of the republic was concerned, was different.”

Neither Mira Markovic nor Slobodan Milosevic expected anything fateful to occur on October 5; all until the beginning of the demonstrations. “That trucks, busses and bulldozers were preparing to come to Belgrade on October 5, we only heard a bit about in our house on the evening prior to Oct. 5 and that morning. In that sense, the information that reached my husband, and which I heard from him, didn’t indicate any kind of serious violence. We both believed that it was some kind of pressure to prevent the second election round for president. Although, really, we didn’t understand why that second election round should be prevented”, says Mira Markovic.

The Milosevic-Markovic family found out that Vojislav Kostunica had won the elections and that there wouldn’t be a second election round from Vojislav Kostunica himself. “My husband received a message on October 6 that Vojislav Kostunica wishes to see him. Slobodan agreed to meet with him. On that occasion Vojislav Kostunica informed him that the Federal Constitutional Court had decided that he had won the elections for president and that this was published in the Official Gazette. My husband immediately accepted that information and congratulated Vojislav Kostunica. He told him, beside congratulating him, that he believes that it isn’t right to start out his mandate by burning and destroying everything that our son and others owned which had happened in the course of the previous night. Vojislav Kostunica, as people say, expressed his regret on account of it and said that he knew nothing about it.”

Mira Markovic stresses that the information on Kostunica’s victory was peacefully accepted by their family and that they even greeted this news with some relief. “Slobodan addressed the public, he shortly announced once again that he congratulates the new president and that in future his activities would center on his party, family and, especially, his grandson Marko. And that was all. No one in our family was sorry he was no longer president of the republic, we especially weren’t unhappy because of it. We were unhappy because everything occurred in an unusual and needlessly aggressive manner.”

In the meantime, a lot of stories and intriguing testimonies were published on what had truly happened behind the scenes of the events of Oct. 5. Claims that “Slobodan had ordered that a bomb be dropped on Studio B”, “to assassin 30 people”, “to shoot at the demonstrators”… and similar is categorically denied by Mira Markovic, in the role of immediate witness to the decisions of then acting FRY president Slobodan Milosevic. 

“I spent the majority of that day, October 5, with him. None of that is true. Just like absolutely nothing that is being written about him and us in the press and is being aired on the TV channels from October 6 till today is true.” On what had truly happened and what decisions were being made in those crucial times, she remains equally mysterious even today. “Nothing is being written about what is true in connection with the 5 and 6 of October and in the days immediately following and a few days prior to it anywhere. Everyone remains silent on that. I underline – so do I”, she answers the repeated question decisively.

On those who, following the changes of October 5, had left the left-oriented parties and joined the opposition now in power, Mira Markovic has no dilemmas. “I suppose that the first people to join the new policies and the new government are the ones who, during the previous policies and the previous government and thanks to those policies and that government – had considerably and even illegally made their fortunes. In their wish to preserve their ‘considerable’ fortunes, and out of fear that people would find out about their ‘illegal’ fortunes, they put themselves at the disposal of the new government with the hope, and with a plea, to protect them, to ‘forgive’ them. And in return, they will, in the most innocent case, abandon the policies in which they had taken part, their associates, party comrades, even personal friends from that story, and if need be, they will even accuse their comrades, associates and friends if they are told they have to be accused. They will ascribe responsibility to them for the policies which they themselves had taken part in, often as its creators, in order to protect their benefits and material goods which those policies had made possible. Therefore, I suppose all of those from the former government who aren’t mentioned in the newspapers for any evil doings are in fact suspicious and these are often extremely rich people who have bought the present government’s silence by selling off their party comrades, political associates and personal friends. And mostly those who, both in political and personal issues, are honest people… Some fawning and cowardly people stood by the new government from the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and the Yugoslav United Left (JUL), but it seems mostly thieves have stood by it.”

Following remarks that the media is pulling out exactly such charges increasingly more often, to do with the massive wealth which allegedly was even seized by the members of their immediate family during Slobodan Milosevic’s rule, Mira Markovic, among other things, says: “At the beginning of October the media claimed that my husband had transferred three planes full of gold somewhere in the world after October 6, that he has accounts in foreign banks, that he is a rich man… That as far as money is concerned. Naturally, no one is even mentioning those planes now; he never had a single account in either foreign or domestic banks, apart from the checking account where he received his salary. And as of October 1, Slobodan isn’t receiving any salary. The dirtiest thing of all concerning him, which can constantly be read in the press or heard on TV, is that he had financially profited from his many-year-long presidential position. Any director of a better company or president of a larger municipality has more material goods than he does. Not to mention the ministers. Let the new government investigate foreign accounts, housing square meters, money spent on educating children abroad, and especially the firms of various prominent people, primarily from their own ranks and from the ranks of the former government, but owned by those who the new government doesn’t mention in their media. Fantastic surprises are in tow for the public. When someone in the new government would dare to and want to do that, they themselves along with many journalists and a large number of the citizens would have to apologize to Milosevic. If a man exists who took nothing from the state, nor received anything, then it’s him. And if a man exists who this state is indebted to, it’s him.”

On top of all that, she is surprised by the fact that all his party comrades didn’t stand up to defend Slobodan Milosevic. “I am shocked that I am the only one who talks about it in this way. I wasn’t running after him at the various promotions and construction sites, I didn’t stand next to him at any speaker’s platforms (apart from on Dec. 24, 1996 at the counter-rally, when many of his associates had to be persuaded to stand on an unprotected speaker’s platform in the middle of Belgrade where demonstrations were raging for the second month). Those ‘fans` of his who unabled anyone, even me, to approach him, should defend him from slander in these times. They have fled to other parties today, retreated into retirement, transformed themselves into apolitical advisors in the firms where they were directors for ten years or they have made some other kind of deal with the new government not to defend their boss, to keep quiet, and in return the new government won’t touch them. To allow them to retain their firms, villas, chauffeurs, representation, peaceful dreams. If they can sleep peacefully after the deal they made”, says Mira Markovic. 

Following the increasingly serious media allegations that along with her husband she had organized the assassinations of political opponents and those who had different beliefs, Mira Markovic claims that it’s all a bunch of “nonsense”. Her husband is also convinced that it’s “nonsense” and is certain that the “people will know that” which is why they don’t see the need to publicly denounce the media accusations.

“The State Security service (SDB) is, as far as I understood such things, a fairly independent institution and, or so it seems, frequently insufficiently informed… As far as I am concerned, I had no contacts with former SDB top officials. They themselves will confirm this. And as for these new ones – I have even less to do with them. I don’t know whether the accident on the Ibarska highway was of a traffic or political nature. However, I honestly believe that the government in Serbia had no role in it. If it was a political thing, then they were some policies, external or internal, which had nothing to do with the governments in Serbia and Yugoslavia, that is – those policies were contrary to the Serbian and Yugoslav governments. As far as the owner of Dnevni Telegraf is concerned, a long time prior to his assassination he moved both himself and his business dealings into Montenegro and I think his death has nothing to do with politics. And as far as I personally am concerned and my role in the assassinations of the police minister of Serbia and the president of Macedonia, if they weren’t dealing with the death of one man and a serious injury of another, those two ‘charges’ would be an inspirational theme for a treatise on how hate and evil can degrade reason and intelligence. I am waiting to be shortly accused of inciting the war in Chechnya, the floods in India, the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, low temperatures in Siberia. Even if it is coming from political opponents and personally malicious people – it’s too much. But, first of all, it is stupid”, assesses Mira Markovic.

One of the most painful questions is connected to the fate of the missing Ivan Stambolic. “Ivan Stambolic was my husband’s friend. However, we didn’t have especially close family relations. After the Eight Session, Ivan Stambolic left politics and my husband, following his wish, enabled him to be director of the Jubmes bank. He didn’t maintain any personal contacts with him. He didn’t have any political ones since Stambolic was no longer politically active. In my family there was no special animosity towards Ivan Stambolic’s family, and we never even mentioned him. New and tumultuous times arrived. Ivan Stambolic remained in the past. 

When my husband was informed of Ivan Stambolic’s disappearance a few months ago, he issued a command to the interior minister of Serbia to do all that he could to find Ivan Stambolic or to at least find out where he is and what it’s all about. While he remained in the position of president of the republic, he never received that information”, claims Mira Markovic.

Answers to all the other questions concerning politics, family, friends and enemies will be published in the next issue of VREME.