by Milivoje GLISIC
Evening mood. President Milosevic is reclining in an armchair under the visible influence of alcohol with a bottle of whisky beside him. The fireplace crackles. The City Assembly delegation arrives; Nebojsa Covic, then mayor of the city, approaches Milosevic to greet him.
"Don't turn to me," Slobodan Milosevic distances himself. "There's Mira; she called for you; she knows everything; go talk to her!"
Dr. Mira Markovic begins her speech. Her tone is harsh; she is angry with the masses, with internal and external enemies, with capitalism in general. She doesn't want to hear that the working classes are in the streets. Pensions, salaries, child supplements and lunch bonuses are to be paid immediately!
She doesn't say where the money is supposed to come from.
Alertness has failed, she says; even the City Assembly was caught unawares. Whistles are still piercing the ears which is something that should not have been permitted. There must be order.
Then they replace their pagers and cell phones because of conspiracy. They must report to her whenever the situation requires it, at all times.
"Do we understand each other?" asks Dr. Markovic rhetorically.
Nebojsa Covic answers the question with a question of his own.
"Was this a political party meeting?"
This causes the doctor to lose her composure.
"Neso [familiar form of Nebojsa], I will not tolerate or forgive impudent questions!"
When they returned to the City Assembly, Covic summed up their impressions:
"You've seen and heard it. If I had told you, you wouldn't have believed me!"
This is how the government worked...
I guarantee the facts of this story, and the mood, are true; I am not obligated to reveal my source.
Covic then evolved and parted ways with the Socialist Party of Serbia after a humiliating counter-rally. Young and inexperienced, he proposed that election results be recognized. The first person to recognize them was [former Spanich Prime Minister, Felipe] Gonzales. Covic was dismissed from the Basketball Association; he got even by forming the Democratic Alternative and by taking a doctorate at the Faculty of Engineering.
Now Dr. Nebojsa Covic is a deputy Prime Minister of the Serbian Government and the head of the Coordinating Body for the south of Serbia; Seselj commented in Parliament that Covic's body has no organs but spends two million a day. Accustomed to Seselj's destructive humor, we observe that Nebojsa Covic and his team work around the clock to somehow put out the fire in the south. The fact that there is jealousy is proof that they are on the right path...
Covic could be criticized for a certain softening of the vocabulary. Covic justifies the fact that he calls Albanian terrorists extremists by current international usage. The U.S., NATO and the major powers made the political decision to officially designate the terrorists as "armed Albanians"; after they blew up a bus carrying civilians, they were demoted to - "extremists". Certainly they can't be terrorists! Because every other country in the world has the right and the responsibility to fight against terrorism using all means at its disposal while Yugoslavia (Serbia) and Macedonia are advised to show restraint. The international community supports restraint!
They are stronger than us so we must yield but they still can't take away our inalienable right to grumble.
(Global impudence: the other day NATO announced that it doesn't know the source of instability in Macedonia!?)
In addition to Seselj, the agile Covic also has the journalists in Bujanovac fuming. They say in a letter that really could have used a little more stylistic polish: "As witnesses to the unequal treatment by You personally (!) and some members of the Coordinating Body of the two governments toward all the media outlets, except the state-owned Radio Television Serbia, we wish to state that we are frequently in the position where we are unable to get reports of events in the field (!) and information regarding those events. We must advise You that in the past ten days our impression has been that the RTS team is Your 'personal guard' on location while the rest of us are obliged to wait an hour or two or longer for their reports so we can inform the media we represent."
Signed by the domestic and foreign media.
Covic still hasn't had the time to respond.
Despite the above-cited trend in terminology and the impudence in connection with Macedonia, Covic believes in the completely honest intentions of the international community to help Yugoslavia and Serbia in this critical moment. "There is no love and emotion involved," says Covic, "There are only interests..." Which is absolutely true: once it realized that it cannot solve the mess that it had made, NATO allowed Yugoslav forces to enter certain sectors of the safety zone but only with light armament. NATO doesn't want Americans dying for our cause; let the Serbs be the buffer!
Covic's poetics is simple: "We will demonstrate maximum restraint and correctness and maximum respect for European and world standards in the resolution of this problem but that doesn't mean that we will yield on critical issues: there will be no change in borders; this is Serbia and this is FR Yugoslavia; and there will be no special status and no autonomy in the south of Serbia".
If he perseveres in these principles and one likes to believe that he will, being ambitious and energetic, there is talk - and this is already causing problems for him - that Covic might be in the running for president of Serbia.
That winter evening in picturesque Dedinje must have guided him to the right path.