It's Not A Joke

Less than two years after the signing of the Kumanovo agreement, the FRY has not yet shrunk to that extent, but the armed men did gather in the courtyard of the Dedinje residence of the Milosevic couple. They looked just as if they came from that joke, the only difference is that they were no frontier guards and they did not care about the former President’s sleep. Instead, their intention was to arrest him. Nor did Milosevic turn his head to the other side and continued to sleep because it was far too noisy – his own security opened fire at those uninvited guests; a whole arsenal of weaponry was found in his villa the day later; and Milosevic himself possessed a loaded gun with 25 bullets.

GUNPOWDER TEST: Two days later, a press conference was held in the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) of Serbia, at which a part of the discovered arsenal in Milosevic’s residence was shown. The picture had much in common with those from the pre-Kumanovo cycle and Pristina, where our armed forces regularly invited the press to see and shoot what has been left from an imprisoned or dissolute group of terrorists. The reminding went even further – the same people who used to confiscate and then put on display the terrorist weaponry, now organised an exhibition of weapons of their former supreme commander.

 At some point during the two-day agony of Slobodan Milosevic’s arrest in 11 Uzicka Street, the public was informed of about thirty fully armed people which constituted the former President’s personal or para-party security. Later investigation showed that combined private-party teams of bodyguards, ready to engage in an armed conflict if necessary, were at Milosevic’s disposal. The self-proclaimed Duke Sinisa Vucinic and a certain Radovan Martesic belonged to the private security, while Bogoljub Bjelica and Ratko Zecevic guarded Milosevic as SPS volunteers. The investigation has it that all of them definitely opened fire at the members of MUP. The first three of them were arrested, while Zecevic still has an excuse thanks to his MP immunity (in the Federal Parliament).

Bjelica, not much heard-of in the public, is, however, president of the municipality of Stari Grad in the name of SPS. Before that appointment he used to live in Pancevo and was that city’s mayor and also a minister in the Federal Government. In the span of last several months, he became one of Milosevic’s men of trust, one of those who frequently paid him a visit and informed his boss about the affairs of interest within SPS. At one point, Bjelica was also mentioned as a potential candidate for a new SPS president in Belgrade, but for some reasons that idea was suppressed. So far, he was not known for brandishing his guns around, while that cannot be said of the MP Ratko Zecevic, a former first man of the Toplice county and the president of SPS in Prokuplje. During the opposition rally from the time of the Alliance for Changes, on July 8th 1999, Zecevic turned up at a window of the SPS seat in Prokuplje and shot at the installed stage on which the majority of current DOS (the Democratic Opposition of Serbia) leaders were standing. Consequently or not, three days later, Slobodan Milosevic, the then FRY President, endowed Zecevic with a medal for his contribution to the defence of the country. This time, Zecevic will most probably be deprived of his MP immunity.

SEVEN DWARFS: One of the socialists who did most to end the Dedinje crisis peacefully, the Vice-president of this party Branislav Ivkovic, explained later how his party colleagues opened fire (and wounded a few policemen), since they defended Slobodan Milosevic from the supposed bounty hunters – Milosevic’s head is worth five million dollars. This story, combined with that about 50 million dollars of humanitarian aid, for which the current authorities apparently sold Milosevic to the West, or to be precise to Washington.

The Dedinje incident revealed that a number of socialists had different emotional approaches towards their boss. Almost all officials of this political faction applied to participate in the so-called national guards in front of the former President’s house. Some of them, like Bjelica and Zecevic, were ready to take up arms in their defence, believing that it could lead to a much greater general uproar. Others sympathised with the man who has symbolised the power in this country for years, but they did not dare do more than take part in the unarmed national guards. There were also those who looked upon the past times with sorrow, recalling their once powerful boss, especially at the time when the entire police were in his service, but they also felt that this was perhaps the opportunity to save SPS from a total disaster.

If we exclude Milosevic’s ‘freezing’ of the leading party position, then the absence of Bjelica, and the potential absence of Nikola Sainovic, Mihalj Kertes, Ratko Zecevic and several other senior party officials, the socialists can said to be ‘functioning quite normally’. That is what Branislav Ivkovic claimed in an interview for BETA a few days ago.

According to him, the party is now being led by seven people, who are in a regular communication with Milosevic (apart from Ivkovic, those are Zoran Andjelkovic Baki, Ivica Dacic, Dmitar Segrt, Zivadin Jovanovic, Zivorad Igic and Bojan Kekic).

Someone from this group will surely inform Milosevic that on the first session of the Central Committee of SPS, held after the Dedinje crisis, one of his close associates, Dragan Tomic, the former President of the Serbian Parliament and the leading man of Jugopetrol, was excluded from this party. Tomic was among the first to pretend that he has never known Slobodan Milosevic. However, he was given notice of discharge due to some other reasons.

Among the activists of the ‘national guards’ and at the meetings of the party leadership, the central subject was undoubtedly the situation which befell on Slobodan Milosevic. The greater part of socialists consider that their president (as they still call him today) would stand a chance to defend himself at a fair trial, although nobody denies that many things in this country functioned thanks to the money illegally procured by Mihalj Kertes during his post as Federal Customs Bureau Director.

Squandering of the budget money meant nothing unusual to them in the days when the country was under the sanctions, and the fact that a part of that money undoubtedly ended in certain private pockets could be considered as a ‘collateral damage’ on the way to realise a number of dignified aims.

Many of them are also of the opinion that this ‘staged political’ court trial against Milosevic could be very painful for many SPS supporters in this country, even for the actual regime. Maybe that is what Ivica Dacic referred to at a press conference, an hour or two after Milosevic was transported to the Central Prison, when he said that what had just happened was only the first act of the whole drama to follow. However, it seems that he could also have in mind the street protests of discontented SPS membership and some more indirect supporters, which will surely take place in the future.

Asked to give an explanation why Slobodan Milosevic, in spite of his assertion that he ‘will not go to jail alive’, still changed his mind, Ivkovic referred to the conscience of his party president and resolve to prevent any further bloodshed.

‘People on both sides were fully equipped and armed’, says Ivkovic to BETA, having in mind the defence of the Milosevic residence and members of the special MUP units. Some other socialists claim that Milosevic was definitely issued with some guarantees (which are rather to be avoided), after which he decided to make this crucial decision and agree to go before the investigative magistrate. Asked why Marija Milosevic opened fire at that moment – one socialist replied: ‘Because Slobodan obviously did not know how to come to terms with his children. Marija only made the situation more intricate.

The ‘national guards’, the members of the Milosevic brotherhood from Montenegro, the private-party formation and Marija herself, all failed to protect the former FRY President from being transported to the Central Prison and subjected to the investigation outside the walls of his house, what he unquestionably aimed at. 

Slobodan Milosevic in prison (although it sounds somewhat cynical) could, perhaps, save the socialists from further deterioration. At first glance, he will help SPS to homogenise itself emotionally and proclaim him as a new victim of the new regime and the international community.

As the time goes by, however, it will definitely come to the question of his successor and, of course, succession, to which his influence will be less and less. Those who are well informed about all undertakings within SPS claim that the ‘seven leading dwarfs’ who are managing the party at the moment and supposedly have regular contacts with their boss, are actually very much divided in their aspirations and personal ambitions. That will certainly come to light very soon.

ELECTIONS

Last Friday, at about the same time when the first vehicles arrived in front of 11 Uzicka Street, a new president of the party organisation in Belgrade was being elected in the premises of the City Committee of SPS. The only candidate was Ivica Dacic, the hitherto president of Belgrade SPS, although there was a possibility of suggesting some other candidates. During the electoral session, there came a message that the voting should be abandoned and that everyone should join the national guards in front of the presidential residence as soon as possible. No one else but Bogoljub Bjelica suggested the postponement of the electoral session. His proposal was not adopted and the voting did take place, though quickly. Dacic was re-elected president of Belgrade SPS and afterwards all participants of the session hit the road towards Dedinje to guard Slobodan Milosevic.