Panic's Turn

This was just a verbal threat, because the real initiative is in the hands of Slobodan Milosevic, who is taking apart the creaking federal structure bit by bit, in the same manner in which he dismantled the institutions of the former Yugoslavia.

The affair over the tapping of the federal top has remained unresolved; fresh election money was printed; the Serbian police occupied the building of the federal police and have not abandoned it yet in spite of a court decision to do so, and in spite of reprimands by Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic that the matter pertained "to an act of usurpation which endangered the country's legal order."

Even though these words were spoken by the man in charge of the army, Milosevic was not impressed. The impression is being created that the army is practically on Milosevic's side (as Kadijevic did ahead of the 1990 elections.) The Defence Minister's Collegium (bypassing the General Staff) is against Panic, bringing to mind the once very active Committee of the League of Communists in federal organs, through which Milosevic worked during the "anti-bureaucratic revolution."

Panic said that he was working in coordination with Cosic, and that he was resolved to fight a step lower in order to protect Cosic's state program from obstructions. Cosic announced a constitutional reform which would strengthen the federal state, and abolish the office of republican president, and the current situation with three heads of authority. Cosic, as usual, is keeping quiet while Milosevic's machinery is going ahead at full speed. The Socialist's spokesman Ivica Dacic said that the Socialist ministers had consulted their party a month ago over the possibility of resigning and had been told to wait. The Government's statement says that the federal ministers who had resigned had constantly been in contact with Milosevic, and that Panic had not had the strength to kick out those he suspected of duplicity.

Milutin Mrkonjic was the first to leave Panic's government, after he learned that Panic's goal was to topple Milosevic. A month later, in mid October, Vladislav Jovanovic left. Just ahead of the elections race, Minister Without Portfolio Radmila Milentijevic also resigned (with the touching explanation that "her conscience made her do so.") Nikola Sainovic followed.

Oskar Kovac was last with the most restrained explanation, saying that he could not remain in the Government because Panic was a direct rival to his party leader Milosevic, a stand that Panic as a democrat could understand.

The campaign against Milan Panic includes old farcical methods, a little of the old formula "that the federal state is an anti-Serbian creation," something of Bora Jovic's famous April 1990 "resignation dictated by conscience," and some new techniques of obstruction used in the dispelled federal assembly.

Now, as in 1990, Milosevic asked that an anti-inflation program be drawn up, and kept up pressure for the printing of fresh money all Summer. One hundred weeks ago, ahead of the 1990 elections during Stanko Radmilovic's government, he made an incursion into the primary issue of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, only to repeat it all over again. The attitude towards Panic's government is the same as it had been towards Ante Markovic's at the time - Panic is being accused of not carrying through the anti-inflation program!

Stalin used the same methods: accuse your enemies of your crimes.