Scandalous Report

On the very day when Yugoslavia is expecting the news about its return to the World Bank and the resolution of that bank to approve the conversion of the old FRY debt of over USD 1.7 billion as well as the endorsement of a new forty-year credit – both local and foreign media are creating another Balkan scandal. After having watched some TV footage on the war in Banjaluka, it crossed my mind that, hopefully, the world bankers have not seen such scenes. However, even if they have seen some of our national disgrace, let me continue with revealing the thread of my secret anticipations – I hope they are acquainted with geographic matters and that they are informed about our ‘specific relations’ with our dear neighbours from the Republic of Srpska, procured by President Vojislav Kostunica. I honestly hoped that, on this occasion, the official Belgrade – either Patriarch Pavle, President Kostunica, or Prime Minister Djindjic – would utter a few words on religious open-mindedness, all that in order to facilitate the inflow of the international community’s promised financial aid to the impoverished Serbia.

I began to mention all this because I have lived in Vojvodina for quite a long time and noticed the soundness and advantageousness of religious and national tolerance, especially when the western force presses from the outside and when all Serbian patriots run to look for shelter in the cosmopolitan Belgrade and in Vojvodina. Whoever managed to flee from Lika, Kordun, Banija or Baranja with some money, surely tried to invest it or have it laundered in Belgrade or Vojvodina. Vojvodina seems to have resisted to their higher national temperature, and they have somehow managed to calm themselves down here. It is likely that they have comprehended that money and emotions do not go hand in hand with each other – because it is money that deteriorates first.

Similarly to the ‘exiled investors’ from Bosnia and Croatia, international companies also glanced at the national and religious tolerance of Vojvodina, so according to the statement of Goran Pitic, the Republic Minister of International Economic Relations, over 80% of the world acquisition is directed towards Vojvodina. However, there is a slight dispute even with that province, since the ‘straightforward unitarians’ are of the opinion that it is quite natural that the money from the sale of state companies should actually go to the hands of the state and that those should be managed by the state, that is Serbia (‘for which we have fought’). Zoran Djindjic, the Serbian Prime Minister, who is, by the nature of his position, the principal promoter of this new concept of law on privatisation, is bound to talk about the decentralisation of the state and the centralisation of all economic resources at the same time – especially the alterations of the process of privatisation. Therefore, he is frequently visiting Vojvodina – to quiet down the autonomists and threaten his fellow politicians from Vojvodina for their ‘personal campaign’ on that subject, while he himself is ‘a greater autonomist than Canak and Isakov are together’ (Canak has, of course, rejected that by claiming that Djindjic can talk whatever he wants and that he even has a bigger nose than Vladan Batic).

Politicians in Vojvodina, however, are not going to give up easily their confrontation to the new law on privatisation. For example, Mile Isakov has recently said that the new law was being prepared in conspiracy and that it would equally be put into effect. Isakov estimates that ‘the practice of the definitely harmful centralisation of the government is moving ahead, since it is anticipated that all the money from the sale of state companies should go to a single treasury, from where it would be distributed only in accordance with the decision of the central authorities. From the autonomist point of view, it is unacceptable, since the creators of the privatisation process have already picked the best companies in Vojvodina and have no intention to share the profit with them. In that sense, the reformists have already submitted a warrant for the summoning of the extraordinary session of the Parliament of Vojvodina, at which the draft of that law would be elaborated and which would endorse the resolution that no company from that province can be sold without the consensus of its employees, the city in which it is located and the parliament of the province.

Hence, it is not only about the reckless Nenad Canak, the leader of Djindjic’s coalition partner (LSV), but also a wider resistance towards the ‘policy of tolerance’, promoted by the DOS (the Democratic Opposition of Serbia) government. Of course, the autonomists of Vojvodina can be broken down by Kostunica’s supporters (they are dominated by ‘disappointed socialists’), or by some other means – but that would definitely lower the price for which Serbian companies can be sold. On the other side, there is a real danger of expanding the demands of participation in the ‘privatisation feast’, which could cause misunderstandings among foreigners about the issue of commission. Nevertheless, as Merlo Ponti used to say, ‘capitalism is confusing’.