Do it Yourself!

In only three weeks, Zoran Asanin, a self-created entrepreneur from Novi Sad and a sympathizer of the opposition, rallied about 11,400 people in the Vojvodina Association of hard currency bank account owners, he organized three "blockades of banks" and a protest rally in front of the Yugoslav Assembly's Chamber of Citizens, he managed to get one million Deutsche marks out of banks in the province and signed, with the already frightened bankers, "protocols" on the dynamics of paying out old hard currency savings. It was enough for one brave and industrious man to realize that all state institutions are suffering from "systemic arrogance", that the legal order is of no use and that in an atmosphere of anarchy everything must be done according to the principle "do it yourself", in order for numerous helpless people to rally around him and to do something. Prodigals and debtors: "Along with people from the Serbian Association of hard currency bank account owners", said Mr.Asanin to "Vreme", we have been trying for a long time to meet with the former republican finance minister, who is now "only" the Serbian vice-premier, Jovan Zebic. We haven't succeeded in this, but we did establish good cooperation with the federal government. I went to government sessions, spoke to the Yugoslav Assembly's committees. We immediately received support and we found fully acceptable the solution envisaged by the draft law on foreign exchange operations whose provision 139 clearly says that commercial banks are obliged to pay out hard currency savings in hard currency, thank God. If they are not able to do this, under provision 141, they must undergo bankruptcy procedure, and then be closed down. They have enough property to first pay out money to the owners of hard currency bank accounts. If this were so, the Novi Sad bank wouldn't have been able, in the past few weeks alone, to give 100,000 marks for renovating and painting the Town Hall, to make it possible for moms' and dads' students to go on study trips to the United States worth 100,000 marks, while at the same time, to keeps saying to the citizens who had entrusted it with their money that it is the Federation that is supposed to pay back their hard currency savings. "The Novi Sad bank", added Mr.Asanin, "offered us only a 'fund' worth 30,000 marks until the end of the year for the most needy bank account owners, while their apparatus pays out salaries, buys cars and acts as if nothing has happened". Strength and trust: The pressure exerted by the citizens rallied around the Association of hard currency bank account owners has produced much better results in other banks. Investbank's branch in Novi Sad has undertaken to pay out 500 marks to its clients every month, the Panonska and Vojvodjanska banks give 250 marks every day to thirty of its clients. The protocols signed with the Privredna banka (the former Ljubljana bank in Novi Sad) and Jugobanka are producing some new, interesting results. Apart from having promised to pay out 100,000 marks by the end of the year, for the most urgent cases, these two banks have also proposed that to this they add 50,000 marks worth of dinars from which a number of bank account owners could get 150 marks, but this money would be treated as fixed-term deposits with a 200% interest (so that, in fact, the actual exchange rate would be 390 dinars per one mark). The interests on overdrawn dinar bank accounts would be frozen. Zoran Asanin thinks that he will rally very soon most of the 300,000 or so foreign currency bank account owners in Vojvodina, whose outstanding claims amount to around 503 million dollars (banks in Serbia owe their clients 3.5 billion dollars). He has already written to the president of the Vojvodina Assembly, saying that he cannot get offices for his association, although it already has more members that all the political parties together, and it is also consistent in its non-party orientation. "Neither people working for the state, nor those from financial cabinets", stressed Zoran Asanin, "realize that the question of restoring faith in banks is practically the crucial question of Serbia's development. If they realized that the Association of hard currency bank account owners could only help them in that, they would have a different approach. It is scandalous that the Yugoslav Assembly's Chamber of Citizens rejected the Law on foreign exchange operations which suits the citizens and this points to a link between certain interests to which special attention should be devoted". Pictures and nails: This is what Zoran Asanin has to say, a man who showed how independent he is already a few years ago, when, as the only non-communist in the Vojvodina Assembly, he had verbal duels with the then provincial prime minister Radoman Bozovic. At the time, none of the newspapers made mention of Asanin's amendment to the regulation on "taking down" the pictures of Josip Broz from office walls. The amendment requested that after the pictures are taken down, the nails be pulled out of the walls so that no one would be able to hang new official portraits on them.