Issue 476 - February 1, 2001

The onus is on Djindjic and Mihajlovic to prove that the people they are appointing are truly honest and capable of dealing with the entire heritage left behind for them by the former regime which, let us not kid ourselves, many of them were part of

The new Chief of State Security of the Serbian Police, Goran Petrovic, is the first resident of Belgrade to come to this position. Of the ten candidates for the position of Chief of State Security, Petrovic entered into competition with another three candidates, and was chosen supposedly because no party within DOS tried to promote his candidacy.

For months, the public of Serbia was flooded with promises of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia´s (DOS) leaders that it will reform and reconstruct the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) of Serbia from ground up. And finally, following long procedural and legalistic wrangling, we now have new department heads of the public and state security services who are supposed to enact the main part of the clean-up of Augean´s stable which the former president has left as his legacy to the new government. These are the people whom everyone expects to clarify a number of unsolved murders and kidnappings and to sever the connection between state institutions and organized crime. Their work should also encompass the lifting of the mortgage of war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo which MUP, by sponsoring various paramilitary formations, was deeply involved in. Is the team which the government of Serbia has appointed these days up to that task?

Serbia is in a position of a bankrupt debtor whom international creditors don´t have much faith in, they think it´s still hiding something somewhere and are demanding that it immediately pay back all its debts, complete with interest, under threat of debtor slavery

Although it sounds quite interesting, it will not be an easy job to determine the balance with the past. Because the ‘past’ has already proved to be ready even to shoot in order to defend its traditions. And a tradition would not be a tradition, if it were not dependent on an ideological fashion