by Beta
Beta news agency provides the speech of Vojislav Kostunica in full.
"Dear liberated Serbia, Belgrade,
Belgrade is today Serbia, and not a small Serbia, but a glorious Serbia. The whole country has risen to make one man, Slobodan Milosevic, leave. Serbia has stopped until that man leaves, and when he leaves, Serbia will move, and she will do better. But Serbia is not forcing that man to leave, the way he led Serbia and our people by force. We ousted him in elections.
And because of that, because of your votes cast in the September 24 elections, I am proud. I am proud to be a citizen of Serbia and Yugoslavia, I am proud to belong to our holy Church, I am proud that you have given me your trust. And I am proud that you have chosen me for president of FR Yugoslavia.
I feel like a president and I am the president, thanks to your votes, thanks to the basic rule of democracy that popular will is crucial in it. And that is the way it was in the September 24 elections. And the whole Serbian nation went to those elections with one thought - peace.
Peace among us, peace between Serbia and Yugoslavia and the whole world, peace between Serbia and Montenegro. But one man has for years been introducing unease, uncertainty and fear into this nation. This man has unnecessarily led Serbia to wars and now wants to start a war against his own people because of lost elections.
But, let me ask you - who stole those elections, who violated the Constitution, who illegally changed the Constitution, who wanted these elections if not Slobodan Milosevic?
He wanted these elections and he had them. They were held according to his rules, he used the media to mislead the population, to say the worst about his own people on his television. We told him to choose the rules, to choose his weapons. His weapons are lies and violence, our weapons are the truth and non-violence.
Those who do not live among the people, who do not dare talk to the people, who do not know suffering of the people, have condemned themselves to lack of freedom. We know what freedom is. We fought for freedom in these elections, and freedom, peace and order triumphed in these elections.
But he refuses to acknowledge that. He has decided to steal. He stole votes and found yet another method for vote rigging. In Kosovo he decided to have ethnic Albanians vote for him even in those places where there were no polling stations.
He has made a mistake yet again. Had he called the ethnic Albanians to participate in the elections, all of them would have participated and voted for him. If someone implemented anti-Serb policies, pro-Albanian policies in the recent past, if someone allowed Albanians to get within striking distance of an independent Kosovo, if someone brought so many foreign soldiers to Kosovo, to our land, that man is Slobodan Milosevic.
He is the man who always cared about everything else but his own people, who implemented other policies instead of the Serb policy. Can someone who was more concerned about others than about his own people still lead our nation?
He has recently accused us of working for NATO. But I tell you - Slobodan Milosevic is the most likely candidate for a NATO hireling in Serbia. I do not know whether he does that out of interests, but I do know that there would be no NATO troops on both banks of the Drina river if it weren't for Slobodan Milosevic.
But let me tell you one more thing. I do not absolve of guilt those who bombed us. They are also criminals, but one man provided conditions for their crimes. We must not forget that.
And then, he decided to engage in vote rigging in these elections. He found his own Federal Electoral Commission in which both mathematicians and directors of the Federal Statistics Institute do not know how to add numbers.
He stole and when he realized that his theft would be revealed, when he realized that there was no way out, then he decided to use yet another one of his institutions, filled by people without honor and integrity - the Federal Constitutional Court. And that Court is everything but a court. He decided to use that institution to annul the rigged elections, to annul the first round of elections and to hope that some other round of elections would come. There will be no second, nor any other round of elections.
Serbia has set off on the road towards democracy, and democracy does not agree with Slobodan Milosevic. For ten years that man had time to learn what democracy is, for ten year he had opportunities to look his people in the face, to talk to them. He was not capable of doing that. He treated his political opponents, the opposition, as enemies.
He was capable of talking to even our worst enemies abroad, he could negotiate in Dayton, but he did not talk to his own people. And that is why there is no place for him here anymore. Serbia has risen and ranks around Slobodan Milosevic are increasingly thinning out. The SPS is disappearing, crossing over to the other side. In the state apparatus there are no more people who are prepared to back him up, including the military and the Police. All of them support the people. And those who are against the people, a handful of them who are making threats with an empty rifle named Slobodan Milosevic, are on the other side.
Our actions today are history, history created by this people on its own, without anybody's help. We do not need anything, we do not need Moscow or Washington. Serbia has risen!
And now Serbia will first set off towards a new future with friendly nations in Europe, with nations who understood us, the Greeks and the French, with the Norwegians, and other nations. Serbia will be what she has always been, but without Slobodan Milosevic - a part of Europe.
Because, today it is clear, just as Serbia cannot survive without Europe, as she has always been a part of Europe - this is the most European part of Europe - Serbia - thus similarly Europe cannot go on without Serbia. But only if Slobodan Milosevic goes first. And Serbia will become a part of Europe and Europe today sends us a message that she cannot be complete without Serbia and we send a message to Europe and the democratic world - democracy has arrived in Serbia, raise your voices, raise your hands - sanctions must be abolished.
Today, that is our message for Europe and the democratic world. No more sanctions for Serbia in which the people with its own will, in dishonest Milosevic's elections, won. That is democracy!
We shall defend it in the same way we went to these elections, using our weapons against theirs, non-violence against their violence, truth against their lies, and persistence and faith, and we shall defend it because we shall never give up. They ask me about the message for today and I say - to the end!
At this spot, and everywhere else in Serbia our numbers must grow. We must stay together until victory. We know how communism was defeated elsewhere - by the popular will, liberated people against the communist violence. And it's only a matter of time when we shall have our victory.
Dear Serbia, we shall not go to Dedinje. We shall stay here. We shall stay here where national institutions are, where our parliaments are, because those parliaments are ours. And he can go to his, stolen, snatched away from rightful owners. And when new Serbia comes all of that will be returned. And there will be no thievery, no poverty. We shall have laws instead of thieves. Money will not be smuggled out of this country but will stay here and we shall get financial support from our compatriots living abroad.
Belgrade, Serbia, I thank you for the trust you have placed in me. Thank you for staying with us to the end. Let us stay together. You stay with me and I shall stay with you. Cheers!"