"A broad and organized action which is producing results"...

The minister of police Zoran Sokolovic appeared at the Assembly on Thursday (March 18th) and said that the Government "has launched, one can freely say, a broad and organized action for combating economic crimes, which is producing results". He mentioned the number of 183,000 committed criminal offenses, which is by one third more than last year; he concluded that "we consider the spread of economic crimes to be an exceptional social danger" and without further elaboration, included among these crimes "the unlawful conduct of certain people holding positions in the state and the economy"; "the abuse of one's social position accompanied by corruption, bribery, avoiding tax and other financial obligations and other malversations"; "transactions aimed at laundering money"; "doing business with problematic foreign partners" and "other acts". He even mentioned a number of traffic violations, but he made no special mention of the ministerial affair. Shocked as always when they are addressed by the police, members of the Serbian parliament spent more time showing identification cards (at the beginning, one said that he had misplaced the document somewhere) than on discussing the Government's report. The mill ground on and the debate produced no practical result. Sainovic did not find it necessary to come and say whether he felt a moral obligation because of the minister he recently proposed to the Parliamen. There was no vote of confidence in the Government whose minister had been arrested; on the contrary, the Government received encouraging praises, and the blame was placed on somebody else. Milan Tosic (Socialist Party of Serbia) ascribed the reason for the growing crime in society to "those who staged Yugoslavia's disintegration and who are now also staging the disintegration of Serbia". Dejan Kulic (SPS) stressed that "hovering above our heads like the sword of Damocles is the criminal institution of so called non-peaceful demonstrations". The leader of the Democratic Party of Serbia, Vojislav Kostunica explained this strategy by claiming that the regime in Serbia cannot do without crime - it produces it and fights against it at the same time. The socialists and the radicals agreed to somehow hush up the matter by trying to show that "they are cleaning in front of their own doors first". The radicals were active in defending the Government from the side, first expressing support for the start of its action, and then calling on it to improve the financial position of the police ("since we are adopting the budget, let's launch the action 10,000 apartments for our policemen"), then by requesting that a statement given in front of the police cannot be refuted in court. They held to their social-demagogical stand: "the Serbs are enduring hunger with such pride that the whole world is afraid of them, while some steal in a Mercedes" (Tomislav Nikolic), but they did not bring this in connection with the current developments. They tried to shift the debate onto a side track and to mine it. All this looked very shaky in the midst of the biggest post-war affair, until they came to the national terrain. Arkan attacked Albanian tradesmen of obtaining flour in Vojvodina with bribery and claimed that all the drug and arms dealings go through Kosovo, but even this they listened to tiredly, until someone came upon the idea to mention Agoston because of a controversial statement about an international intervention for protecting the Hungarians in the event of attacks they are being threatened with. No one mentioned Sava, Bozovic was saved, and they took it out on the Hungarians.