by Petar IGNJA
Let us look into details. According to the procedural rules of the National Parliament of Serbia, a vote can be cancelled if it was irregular. Of course, a vote cannot be regular in absence of quorum. Every irregular vote violates the procedural rules and that violation can be flagged. Only the president or a representative of a club of representatives can discuss violations of the procedural rules. Individual representatives are not allowed to do the same! That rule obviously violates the constitution since parliament includes representatives who are not part of any club of representatives (at least five representatives are needed to form a club), so that, although the Constitutional Court has decided that seats in the parliament belong to representatives, rather than their political parties, some representatives are not equal, or some are more equal than them, since they are not allowed to flag a violation of the procedural rules.
Now we reach the crux of the matter. Those who had the right to flag a violation of the procedural rules did not do that. The procedural rules say: president or a representative of a club of representatives is to be given the floor immediately by the president of the parliament if they flag a violation of the procedural rules... Anyone claiming a violation of the procedural rules must state which article of the procedural rules was violated, quote the article and explain the alleged violation, and all of that must not take longer than three minutes (excluding the time used to quote the procedural rules). The president of the parliament is then obliged to provide an explanation. If the representative claiming that there was a violation still sticks to the original assertion, the president of the national parliament calls on the administrative committee to reach a decision within 24 hours on the alleged violation of the procedural rules. And that is it. The end; full stop; no more. Can a court get involved in the process? Apparently not.
Does that mean that this whole case is over? Not necessarily. If vote rigging took place in the parliament, then, as is known, those responsible for it must be punished according to the law. As criminals. But... The state prosecutor could and should get involved in the scandal in that case (given that there is justifiable doubt that the vote was rigged). Also, any citizen, a voter and sovereign entity that transferred some of its authority to a representative in the parliament can file a lawsuit, provided he thinks his interests were harmed. However, all of that is theory, and none of that is likely to happen. Governor Kori need not worry.
It seems that the Democratic Party of Serbia is well aware of all this. Consequently, they say they will not demand that the vote be annulled. This political party includes some experienced lawyers, including its president, Vojislav Kostunica. That is why now they are turning towards politics and leaving the legal aspect of the affair behind. Why waste time on a lost cause?
This affair can only be exploited politically, in new elections and that is why all relevant opposition parties are now attacking the government and the authorities trying to prove that they are not respecting fundamental principles of democracy, that they are violating the constitution and laws, and that early elections are necessary.
That is nothing but ordinary political struggle. All opposition parties, anywhere in the world, are waiting for government's mistakes to pounce on them.
Although the story has been told many times so far, it's worth repeating some details. Representative in the parliament Neda Arneric was during the vote for the governor of the National Bank of Serbia on vacation, in Turkey. In order for the vote to be valid, 126 representatives had to be present. The electronic voting system in the parliament chambers registered exactly 126 present representatives. If Neda Arneric was in Turkey, she could not have been at the same time in the parliament. In that case, 125 representatives were present during the vote. Too few for the quorum. It is especially interesting that at the start of the vote president of the parliament Natasa Micic read the list of justifiably absent representatives that included the name of Neda Arneric.
Several days later deputy head of the Christian Democrats' club of representatives Dragan Rafailovic announced that he also had not been present during the vote and had not voted. He reiterated this for NIN, ten days after the initial statement. "I was not there and did not vote".
That provided additional evidence to back up charges made by Milorad Labus, president of the G17 plus, especially since someone leaked the news that another representative who supposedly voted on that day, Marijan Risticevic, was seen in Montenegro, in Budva on that same day. Risticevic adamantly denied that he had been in Budva on that day, but mentioned that people could have seen him in a village near Budva. If there are witnesses, and there are, what can be done?
Then "defenders of the constitution" took the podium and tried to prove that Neda Arneric was actually in the parliament on that day. All those who say that she was there want us to accept their word, but no one is prepared to confirm personally seeing her on that day in the parliament. Not even Lejla Ruzdic, who usually sits next to Neda Arneric, can confirm that she saw her on the day in question.
Fine, sight is known to fail occasionally, but electronic devices should be reliable, right? Well, computers usually don't fail, but people definitely can. Branko Pavlovic from the Initiative for Normal Serbia demonstrated to this journalist that the infamous voting cards are so simple that anyone with basic drawing skills can forge a bar code on a piece of blank paper and fool the machine.
"These cards have no code, nothing that could protect the identity of a representative. There is only a simple bar code. With such a system, anyone can vote and it is easy to forge votes. I personally have doubts about regularity of all recent votes in the parliament," says Pavlovic.
Aleksandar Radosavljevic, spokesperson of the Democratic Party, has spent a lot of time trying to prove that Neda Arneric was present during the vote. He waved around some papers, in front of journalists, but refused to show any of these "documents" to anyone. Radosavljevic went too far when he claimed that Ms Arneric flew from Turkey to vote and then flew back to finish her holiday in Bodrum [Bodrum airport only has charter flights, none of them flying to Belgrade on the days Ms Arneric allegedly traveled; when this was pointed out, Radosavljevic claimed that she had taken a taxi to Istanbul, roughly 400 miles from Bodrum, to catch a flight].
That was too much! Obvious contempt of common sense earned a quick reaction by the public. For several days already, citizens of Serbia have been referring to Bodrum as Podrum [cellar]. The implication is that Radosavljevic made a mistake and wanted to say that "Neda voted from the cellar".
It would be dishonest to place all the blame on Neda Arneric. She ended up a victim because she did not have what it takes for swimming in the boiling cauldron of Serbian politics. Perhaps she believed that individuals should sacrifice for the sake of state interests? Has she read Machiavelli?
"Yes, Machiavelli tried to prove that an individual who is concerned with state business and interests cannot at the same time be concerned with ethical aspects of his actions. On one occasion he said that he loved his homeland more than his soul. Thus, one could say for Neda Arneric that she loves her party more than her soul and that she is prepared to lie for her party and take responsibility for that sin. Everything that has happened and all the attempts to establish a parliamentary democracy, should be compared with parliamentary practices in the United Kingdom, which have been working relatively well since 1701, since the Succession Law. They quickly spotted that the head of the parliament can be biased. Consequently, the [lower house of the] British Parliament does not have a president, as in Serbia, but a speaker. The speaker is appointed by the party in power, but he or she stops being a representative of the ruling party, cannot vote, so that he can rise above partisan interests and be unbiased. During every important vote in the parliament, representatives enter a hallway, which ends with two doors. The party whip stands at the beginning of the hallway. He is supposed to ‘shepherd' representatives to his side. The leader of the party is also there. He can easily control, count the representatives and find out how they voted. There can be almost no abuse of the system. The same procedure was followed in the Roman Senate," says Dr. Kosta Cavoski.
As far as Dr. Cavoski is concerned, he has no doubts. After everything that has happened, Natasa Micic [president of the parliament] would have to resign.
Those who put together this pitiful conspiracy have miserably failed. Charges from G17 regarding illegal votes have not been met with honest replies.
The public condemnation, obvious in this case, has the promethean role. That's worth something. Of course, people devoid of morality (our new Machiavellians) will not experience a catharsis because of the public condemnation of their acts and will not be bothered by unclear conscience, but they will definitively be punished in elections. They idea that everything would be sorted out by state institutions, controlled by them, while media and the public should stay out of the whole business, is dangerous. The state and its institutions are everything else but saints. By placing all the trust in the state, this institution confronts human relations, while alienated political power confronts human freedom and common sense. No, the Earth is not flat, even though the authorities in Serbia claim that the truth is determined by votes in parliamentary committees.
Those who tried to put a straight jacket on Serbia should voluntarily withdraw from politics, so that we don't start, crazed, to look into one spot - white spot on a white wall - before the elections.