The Big Question Mark

It is questionable whether the Montenegrins will be able to save Serbia once again, as they did Tuesday last by giving a vote of confidence in the Milan Panic government. If Mr. Panic had been overthrown, Serbia would have been punished even more, politically and economically, while the Socialist government would speedily have started off a conflict in Kosovo, perhaps also a war campaign against Macedonia and the ethnopolitical cleansing of Vojvodina. By attempting to oust Mr. Panic, the Socialists again verified that they have not given up creating a greater Serbia, this time with the assistance of the xenophobic "alliance of Serbian lands".

Such wrath! Five whole years of toil all going to waste! Stop the tanks now, when there are only another several hundred thousand people left to be killed in Kosovo, Macedonia, Vojvodina and Sandzak?! Just when the seizure of Vojvodina Hungarians and opposition Serbs by night and their transformation into soldiers of a grand, expansionistic mission has started off so well. This has been thought out well: the opposition and national minorities get killed, Socialist Serbia is ostensibly expanding, the political elite is reaping riches in smuggling oil and through the privileged export of agricultural produce, while the people patiently wait for the donor to give them their bread rations.

The Serbian Republican Commission for Refugees has already issued instructions to all reception camps to give the refugees fifty grams of bread for each meal, which is one hundred and fifty grams per day, which means one loaf per six and a half adults. And for lunch, when meat is served, to give one meatball of thirty grams per person - and here the Commission recommends the kitchen not to put so much meat into the meatball, but to put one third soya. This mixture is so much better for one's digestion.

The Montenegrins need Yugoslav President Cosic and Prime Minister Panic so that Serbian President Milosevic cannot make them become involved in Serbia's war plans in the country's south and, which is not impossible, in a conflict with Albania over Kosovo. Had the Socialists succeeded in turning Mr. Panic out, the Montenegrins too would have had to pack quickly and flee from "Yugoslavia", because the field south of the southern railway would have begun burning in a few months, or perhaps weeks. Montenegrin President Bulatovic now must, to all intents and purposes, become even closer to the liberal opposition in order to defend himself from Belgrade's revenge by upholding the alternative of an independent Montenegro. He simply cannot wait passively for clashes around Pljevlja and Niksic to be provoked. The best thing for him would be immediately to place one foot on independent Montenegro, as soon as Belgrade begins to shake the branch on which he is sitting, and then the other as well, if the shaking does not stop. There is no doubt that the international community will use all means to help him, should he decide, with the support of the patriotic opposition, to separate from the wartime "Yugoslav" state. The "Yugoslav" army knows that. And, if the Montenegrins leave Serbia, Podgorica will be flooded by such a wave of refugees from Belgrade that Montenegro will become the biggest asylum-giving state in the world.

The Socialists are slowly loosening up regarding the conditions for Serbian parliamentary elections. This is good for them as well, because the space for a historic compromise is broadening, as well as for a possible coalition between the Socialists and the democratic forces in Serbia. Perhaps Mr. Cosic and Mr. Panic are now closer to deciding to move toward the opposition. It was greatly disappointed to hear how the federal authorities courted with the Socialists when humoring them for the nine constituencies. Now both have been cheated by Mr. Bakocevic's conditions for holding the elections. The Speaker of the Serbian Parliament, Mr. Bakocevic, requires the political parties to collect two times less the number of citizens' signatures to qualify for the election race - five thousand - while the federal authorities request ten and a half thousand signatures. Additionally, Mr. Bakocevic's nine constituencies for 250 seats makes it possible for political parties to enter parliament by winning only four percent of the votes; they need around nine percent of the votes to enter the federal parliament, because only 108 members are to be elected for the Chamber of Citizens. That is why the opposition now must attack the federal authorities even more than the republican. And so it falls into an impossible situation: It wants Mr. Cosic and Mr. Panic to lead its election campaign, yet it must accuse them of setting worse electoral conditions than the Socialists. Of course, if one excludes the rest.

If Prime Minister Panic had lost, President Cosic would have been left floating in thinning air with nobody around. Since the beginning of his term in office, one weakness has not been eliminated: not being linked with the political forces in Belgrade which want peace and the democratic transformation of the authorities in Serbia. Mr. Milosevic probably would not humiliate Mr. Cosic by overthrowing him in Parliament because, without Mr. Panic, he could be successfully isolated. He would be harmless and would serve as the sad example of a politician who overrated the authority of his personality in relation to the vulgar voting machine of primitive political conscience.

Analyses of our pre-electoral situation say that Mr. Cosic alone can withstand Mr. Milosevic without fear in the race for president. He alone does not have to invest a lot in the election drive. Everybody knows him. He would only have to hold a number of speeches, to cover Mr. Milosevic's demagogy with a better one. Should Mr. Cosic and Mr. Panic, despite a considerable promise of success, refuse to run in the elections or support the opposition with their names, then the opposition, should it enter Parliament victorious, will wish neither to support them nor keep them. If they should be dismissed by the opposition, they will not find it easy to justify their mission with the alleged desire to rule only a few months to prepare the democratic elections. But even if this were be their sole excuse, it will nonetheless be enough for them to be remembered in goodness.