Groping in the Dark

Judging by the Belgrade promotion of the candidates from the list "SPS-JUL-Slobodan Milosevic", the election results will be declared in the dark and in the presence of an unknown number of the elects

by Aleksandar CIRIC

Vreme, Belgrade, FR Yugoslavia, September 9, 2000

For the presentation of 19 candidates for the Federal Parliament and 110 candidates for local councilors, held on Monday September 4, the Socialist-Jul leftists chose the Usce park and, more specifically, the recently opened obelisk "Eternal Flame". The events received scant promotion in the media and one could only guess that something was going to happen from the chaotic traffic on the former Lenin Boulevard which was, starting with dusk, directed by the Traffic Police. The Police was blocking all the traffic on the former Edvard Kardelj Boulevard between the Chinese embassy and the Branko's bridge. The amount of police security, it would later turn out, did not justify rumors/expectations that the main candidate, Slobodan Milosevic, would appear at the promotion of the list.

Probably by chance, the beginning of the gathering was scheduled for 8 p.m., i.e. in full darkness, since the street lights are turned on at 9 p.m. Thanks to that (darkness) the Serbian TV could in claim in its main news program that "several tens of thousands of citizens" had attended the ceremony. Politika went with the identical estimate the following day, while the correspondents of Borba and Vecernje Novostiestimated the number of attendees at 30,000. Glas Javnosti mentioned "several" thousands, and Blic estimated the audience at 3,000. Whatever the truth, that was far from those "two million" or "several million" that cemented part Milosevic's victories. The buzz of the masses from the past has been converted, even after being passed through the Serbian TV editing room, to the Zen-like "clapping of one hand".

The stage only lacked Chinese paper lamps and a huge dragon lighted form inside to assume definitely Chinese characteristics. Candidates, that is those "who were right during all these years" (Ivica Dacic), stood on the stage like an exhibition of wax sculptures. A cool evening, and a secret gathering in a dark park, and who knows what else, perhaps influenced a rather limited choice of messages sent to the gathered activists by the speakers. Asserting that "every government in the world has its opposition", Ivica Dacic noted that this government is confronting "an opposition that opposes its own people and its own state". Goran Matic not only did not see "any reasons to vote for their agents, servants, and those who have betrayed this country" but also concluded that "those should not even be candidates for office".

Ljubisa Ristic, however, believes that the forthcoming "referendum about the survival of the Yugoslav people and the survival of the Yugoslav state" whose outcome is "a foregone conclusion" can be described with many words. But, "in our election program there are five most important words: first - peace, second - freedom, third - independence, fourth - integrity, and fifth - identity." There is no reconstruction and development without peace, freedom, independence... In the rest of the speech, however, Ristic did not explain the electoral significance of the integrity and identity. Perhaps, this explanation was reserved for Ivica Dacic who accused the political opponents of the left (without mentioning the Serb Radical Party) of "even today saying that it is possible to negotiate about Kosovo and Metohija and their status!"

In general, the opposition was described as a bunch of mercenaries, and traitors, created only to justify the NATO aggression. They are also servile, divisive ("Serbia is allegedly supposed to be decentralized, broken up in six republics. Even Belgrade is supposed to become a republic," said Ivica Dacic) and so on and so forth. In contrast to that, stated Goran Matic, "our country is on the upswing; freedom loving countries and the countries that are trying to pull out of a yoke that has been imposed on them are gathering around our country, as well as those countries that are building their freedom based on our experiences. At this moment over 150 countries from the freedom loving world see in us a spark of some new relations, a spark for the destruction of globalization which is nothing but a new word for colonization". The Federal Information Minister, Goran Matic, was the only speaker who probably by chance, mentioned a name of a presidential candidate other than Slobodan Milosevic. For some reason, he did not mention Vojislav Mihailovic, nor Tomislav Nikolic, but did Vojislav Kostunica. Matic said that "various agents, institutions, centers... in different places tell us that this policy is defeated, that Kostunica has won."

And he still hasn't, as we know.

Translated on September 13, 2000