Instead of the clash of ideas, or at least opinions about important and crucial challenges and trials of the time in which we live and selection of best alternatives, Serb political scene is characterized by the lack of trustworthy political thought and tragicomic, infantile, and senile autism, followed by screaming, nit-picking, personal vendettas, vanity, and malice which are only suitable for Nusic's satires about small town elites in 19 century Serbia. Initially, it seems that Serb political scene is ruled by extreme moralism. However, the more thorough investigation easily reveals the lowest possible, amoral instincts behind the mentioned moralism.
Thus, ideally, the classical theory of "double morality" does not reject public morality, but emphasizes that the state and common interest has primacy over individual, moralistic, and even church interests. In circumstances where politics is able to totally remove morality from the political scene, it almost by default opens an abyss, too often filled with immeasurable human suffering. The most horrifying example of such triumph of political over moral is the theory and practice of russophobic and antichristian Bolsheviks. Believing (based on Marxist superstition as a cover for their hatred of everything Russian and Christian) that every traditional morality is the product of unjust social and economic relations, they imposed and implemented absolute disregard of morality.
In a text "Our and their morality", Leon Trotsky, a.k.a. Bronstein orders: "Only those means which increase the cohesion of the Proletariat are acceptable and binding. Only those means which strengthen its hatred of oppression, which teach the Proletariat to despise official morality and its democratic proponents... Civil war, supreme form of class struggle, violently breaks all moral links between warring classes."
Maybe the security forces in the Republic of Srpska were inspired by similar moral, as opposed to professional, reasons when they allowed otherwise inadmissible encirclement of the president by foreign "advisors" in paid service of foreign powers, as is confirmed by the foreign media, for example Liberation from Paris. Even the state security operatives with the least amount of experience should have been intrigued by the resume of the most influential "advisor", full of evidence for amoral fickleness: starting with the political initiation in the Communist party and defection to the Serb (?) Renewal Movement, over unsuccessful infiltration among Dujic's Chetniks, false assumption of the identity of the representative of the monarchist [Serb] Diaspora and zealous Orthodox fundamentalist, all the way to striking homosexual inclinations.
Anti-Serb attitude of the aforementioned moralism is evident in its goals as well. Instead of a series of war and post-war profiteers who made fortune out of Serb misery and these days surround the president in public discussions and criticize masses, that moralism aimed at and hit only two state-controlled companies which served for the financing of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the police, the only internal defense of the Republic of Srpska from a peace time invasion.
As Prof. Kosta Cavoski correctly noticed in his analysis of the unconstitutional character of the President's order for the disbanding of the parliament, almost all decrees and documents with her signature were originally written in English and then inadequately translated to English which is evident in sentence structure characteristic for English language: [literal translation from Serbo-Croatian] "I decide that the Minister of Internal Affairs will inform me once a week" instead of "I order the Minister of Internal Affairs to inform me once a week".
Of course, it is not reasonable to expect such reasonable attitude because the president of Srpska doesn't control her intellect but is the medium and victim of manipulations by foreigners, as the members of the Srpska Senate [an advisory body; the majority of its members are "patriotic intellectuals" from Serbia] were convinced after a ten hours long discussion in which they were not able to get an answer to at least one of numerous important questions. In return the Senators received a confession of bliss made by "advisors": "Ever since I have started this campaign, I've been sleeping much better!"
The most important test of sincerity for every person passing moral judgments on others is the consistency, which is one of the important foundations of law. For example, in the previous local elections in Serbia, the Democratic party ran under the motto "Honestly!" and won the trust of many voters. Then, the president of the party cynically told those who demanded honesty to look for it in religion, not in politics.
Uninformed or credulous observer of these elections and following several months long demonstrations of mass moralism could expect that the coalition "Zajedno", once in power, would start by investigating the conduct of previous authorities and publicize the evidence for their wrongdoing, corruption and embezzlement. It is probably not necessary to emphasize the value of such evidence in the next, political elections.
However, the above mentioned expectation didn't materialize. Hence, either the leftists in power were honest and impeccable, or their opposition also succumbed to the same vices and extorted immunity by keeping quiet about the crimes of those who had preceded them. Besides, the leaders of the mentioned "opposition" openly extort money (they call it "pocket money") from their subordinates in municipalities where they are in power, while the advisor to the leader of the Serb Renewal Movement and a professor at Belgrade University went so far that he tried to convince TV-audience that nepotism is the best system for the selection of human material for the most important positions. To be fair, it should be emphasized that only the Serb Radical Party, after coming to power in the Zemun municipality, immediately revealed evidence for the crimes of the previous authorities. I am free to conclude that that party, from the moral point of view, is an embodiment of the only moral power [on the Serbian political scene] because it is the only party which has successfully resisted criminal temptations.
Then, the front pages and TV-programs of the "opposition" media portrayed alleged anti-Semitism of the authorities in Zemun, because they supposedly wanted to convert a synagogue into a restaurant. In turned out that the building in question hasn't been used as a synagogue for years. Because of the lack of believers, the Jewish community sold the building to the state in the early sixties. Every sale of a religious object is a sad event but those who support the values of the modern Western civilization, i.e. domination of money over spirit, must be consistent and support the process of secularization. All over Europe, because of the decreasing numbers of Christian believers, churches are being sold. For example, some twenty years ago Amsterdam had more than sixty churches and today only about ten remain. One of the most beautiful churches in Amsterdam, St. Vincent cathedral was demolished in 1989 and turned into an apartment complex with an underground garage.
If the Dutch, who have spearheaded European march toward modern, do not care about sale of Christian churches and conversion of a famous cathedral into a parking garage, why should the local, recent, and definitely too late converts to the Western ways be bothered by the use of the mentioned building as a gallery and a restaurant. When they were committed and loyal members of the Communist party they were not bothered that the building was used for much worse purposes, even as a garbage dump. Besides, European history demonstrates that a cafe, from Parisian Mont Parnase, over Viennese Ring, to Belgrade Skadarlija has always been a significant cultural center.
By allowing stupidly to be dragged into the pogrom like attack of the "opposition" media on the Serb Radical Party, the representatives of the Jewish community stated that that building had enormous historical and religious importance because in the previous century some rabbi had called for the first time on Jews to return to their homeland in Middle East. Later, they admitted that the building hadn't been used as a synagogue for a long time because it had been sold to the state, "but cheaply". Here, the consistency again comes to the front: if that building was so important to the Jews, why did they sell it? Why don't they now offer to buy it back from the Zemun municipality? I don't expect that they expected to be given the building as a present under the threat of moralist blackmail and extortion with the stamp of anti-Semitism.
Is this case really the demonstration of the nationalist intolerance by the Serb Radicals which would definitively deserve a principled condemnation? The answer to this complex question must be based on the general policy of the Radicals in Zemun regarding the allocation of government owned apartments. If that policy is based on discrimination then that must be evident in all cases. An investigation of the allocation of municipal apartments in Zemun reveals just the opposite: some Serbs have also been thrown out of municipality owned apartments but the anti-Radical movement hasn't paid any attention to them. On the other hand the list of non-Serbs, muslims and Croats, who have been given apartments by the local authority is long. Maybe the revelation of such facts has caused a sudden drop in support for the Croat.
Fake moralism of the "opposition" reached the pinnacle of its capability to produce noise and screaming by mobilizing all available means and activists for the condemnation of a banal, actually "bar fight-like" radical punch in the left eye of a small scale provocateur. During a TV-duel with the president of the Serb Radical Party, regarding the mentioned Croat, his lawyer demonstrated unbelievable scorn of decency, truth and arguments, letting himself go with the series of base and offensive remarks, ending with the one which characterized the wife of the opponent as a whore. That woman is a mother of three children and such offensive remark can only have lowest possible motives, nothing but revenge because of the suffered intellectual defeat. In every civilized state in this world such a slander would be punished by the disbarrment.
The slanderer didn't get enough from his pathological enjoyment in perversion but he also physically attacked his opponent. Thus he earned the fitting reply to the issued challenges which wouldn't be out of place even in the effeminate West. The screaming and calling for help by the "opposition" followed and the Serbian media space was jammed by the uncountable photographs of the ugly swollen left eye of the slanderer while the Democratic party called for an uprising against imminent "fascism". Complaints and pleading reached even the UN in New York and probably Bill Clinton; the "opposition" called for the American bombardment of the Serb people begging from the first page of "Srpska Rec" [Serbian Renewal Movement weekly]: "Welcome Bill!"
If that ugly and blue eye is the crucial evidence and crime of alleged Serb "fascism" then I'm free to conclude that this poor Yugoslavia is a paradise full of democracy, tolerance and civilized behavior. At the roughly same time American marines treacherously killed, in front of his son and friends, unarmed hero of the Serb liberation struggle, Simo Drljaca, by shooting in his back, as was proven by the autopsy, and by deception, dressed as Red Cross workers arrested Dr. Mico Kovacevic who hasn't received any medical assistance in the Hague although he suffers from serious heart decease. The "anti-fascist" self-proclaimed "opposition" hasn't condemned these crimes with a single word, not even a whisper of protest and outrage.
Aggressive and fake moralism which is virtually the only remaining value on our political scene is the evidence for two big anomalies. The first one: the lack of a true political program. The second one: misuse of political office and means for illegal and amoral self enrichment. In the first case, moralism is a substitute for policy and in the second one the reaction to the criminalization of politics. Basically, that is the reaction of the public opinion which is cynically exploited by the true or potential culprits in the degradation of politics to the criminal level. That is why the quasi-political choice between various options is based on moral instead of political principles: people vote for those who they consider to be the least amoral. The majority, on the other hand, doesn't trust anyone.
Today in Serbia there is no trace of a classical principle according to which those who enter public service must sacrifice all their private interests. Today in Serbia, the example of the vice-president of the Serb Radical Party, Aleksandar Vucic, who declined an allocated state owned apartment which he received as a member of the parliament is unique. In order to preserve his independence and incorruptibility he decided to stay in a rented apartment.
The catastrophic decline of the politics unavoidably draws with itself moralism, whose poverty is evident by its fake nature and stupidity. This is another proof of the validity of the observation by Otto Weiniger that ethics and politics are an organic whole as two sides of the single nature. The poverty of moralism is also confirmed by its intellectual atrophy and impotence. If our present situation weren't tragic, such quasi-moralistic attacks could serve for the amusement of those who enjoy black humor.