Politics of Murder

Black comedy has definitely become the ruling genre here. The assassination of Momir Gavrilovic, a colonel of the secret service, and all the subsequent events, demonstrate first of all that today in Serbia a lot of effort needs to be made to cause a person to feel slightly surprised and horrified. And even with the greatest effort no one will manage to believe that that murder will be resolved. Things are slightly worse than that. Not only is there no answer to these dark riddles, but it has also become difficult to raise real questions, or to reach some kind of agreement on what the most important questions are. If we start off from a seemingly logical sequence, we will soon ascertain that, apart from Gavrilovic himself and his family, the fact that he passed away in a violent manner isn't the most important issue here. Of course, the police would have conducted its investigation and would have found out what we already know, only in more detail and in a professional manner. Previous year-long employment in the secret service wouldn't have qualified this deceased man as headline news. It would only have been another case from one of the well known categories, for example, one of those who knew too much.   

Therefore, Gavrilovic became an exception not owing to his death, but because prior to it, on that very same day, he had visited the cabinet of the FRY president. There, as the president himself said, he talked about corruption. Therefore, it would be logical to suppose that his very words had killed him or something he could have said but didn't, or at least something someone thought that the deceased could have said. Beside that, he could also serve as a good example to anyone who knows anything and thinks that somewhere a well exists he can safely confide in. Whatever the case, it's difficult to believe in pure coincidence.

Now, if I were in Vojislav Kostunica's place, I too would wonder what to do with a man who had just gone through my door. However, political exploitation began when the Cabinet leaked this to the press, complete with a small bluff that the assassinated had left "written evidence", so that someone somewhere could start to fret. All of it sounded totally vague, as is the custom, but it was still very clear to everyone in front of whose door the corpse was found. From the government of Serbia and the Democratic Party it was immediately retorted that the corpse doesn't belong to them and that it is a case of the all too well-known slander of the dark forces which want to topple the government and stop the reforms.

And since there is no hope that we will really find out who the corpse belongs to, there are no hindrances to stop the mutual accusations or people to freely, in keeping with their party determination, choose who is more to blame here and for what. If you are an honest and conservative legalist, you will know that corrupt reformists stop at nothing, even murder, once someone is on their trail. If you are for the other team, you won't even doubt that the corpse was deceitfully planted and you will try to pass it along.

I can't assess who will fare worse in this campaign, but I do see that this individual, just like the ones from the mass graves, have their usefulness. It might even turn out, in some future elections, that corpses are the main issue and that the winner will be the person who manages to convince the voters that the majority of them belong to the other side. That is, if it is at all possible to ascertain what belongs to whom and if they are counted, the person who is left with less wins. Or will the opposite be true?

As far as I'm concerned, I don't believe that politics are involved in this murder, and I fear there isn't enough politics even where there should be. Gavrilovic definitely didn't pay for his convictions with his life, nor was the hand of his assassinator led by any idea. That is no longer an issue even in the political parties, nor is it easy to discern a trace of an idea or conviction in those whose job it is to represent something and to propagandize. Therefore, this is, judging by all accounts, a standard type of murder which big bucks carry out in necessary self-defense. Nothing ethnic, nothing religious, nothing to do with parties, nothing on the spur of the moment, only following a plan, without hatred and passion. Which means that Serbia truly is in transition and that we are moving towards contemporary societies which have surpassed lowly motives and where one only murders for money.

Backwardness is only apparent in the media's clumsiness and in an all too direct political aspect of the case, which is harmful to both sides. The editors in chief, Vesic and Tijanic, have spilled too much poison over each other, but over all of us too, which we shouldn't forgive them for. Yet, once again, should we really be astonished?

Will this case finish DOS off? Well, that might be an important question, but I somehow feel that it would be even more important if the police, the prosecutor's office and the judiciary started showing some success. As long as we feel legal and physical insecurity, as long as we don't trust in public order, we are forced to depend on the politicians, parties and their mutual relations. The collapse of DOS now has the appearance of a dangerous breakdown which threatens to turn into total chaos, simply because practically the whole system and all state functions are based on an agreement within that coalition.

That, naturally is reminiscent of a party state, where the state shares the party's fate, as was the case with former Yugoslavia. It would be good if all of us weren't DOS's hostages, but as long as there is no good replacement on the horizon, this rotten marriage will somehow be kept alive, even with corpses which are tossed about. That means that DOS is obliged to offer us an institutional way out as soon as possible from the paralysis which it itself has started to create, so that we no longer have to worry what type of mood Djindjic and Kostunica are in.