In ancient Greece and Rome, the procession went around the place that should be freed from evil. Often with torches accompanied by shouts, song or dance.
At the end of the act, a pig, ram or bull was usually sacrificed. This is how squares, towns, villages, fields, houses or places where a crime took place were "cleansed". It was believed that this is how newborns are freed from spells.
It is anniversary, a purification ceremony. That from the verb luster in which the chandelier is recognized because it is in the root luxury (light). But luster, apart from shining, can also mean to ritually clean, to search, to move around.
Admittedly, there were some officials in Serbia and the surrounding area Serbian Orthodox Church to incense the squares after the gay parade, but there was never a real lustration.
Just a summary
Back in January of this year, the students announced the first point of their program lustration, that mystical category of Serbian politics, and now what they mean by that term is taking shape.
The 11-point summary contains only theses, while the comprehensive program has not been published, although, according to "Vremena", it was written a long time ago.
In the second point, it is stated only that the Tax Administration will be strengthened in order to investigate the origin of the property of officials and return "stolen public money to the budget". Then, "examination of the actions of public officials and the responsibility of all individuals who abused their position, indulged in corruption or violated human rights, the Constitution and laws."
Among the people, lustration has a good reputation, although the concepts are often confused. Some think it's a substitute for normal court proceedings, others think it's a magic wand.
Still others, like Andrej Ševo from the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, call for caution. Lustration is not a substitute for criminal responsibility.
"The aim of the lustration is that the members and collaborators of the previous, authoritarian regime, who performed their work negligently, violating or helping to violate the human rights of citizens, are sanctioned by a ban on holding public functions for a certain period," he defines in an article for Peščanik.
The lustration law from 2003, which never took effect, provided for a ban on holding high political positions or those in the security apparatus, elections for deputies and management positions in public companies.
Just criminal liability or more?
There is no word on all of this in the student summary of the program, and until the Student List publishes the entire program, it remains to be guessed as to what "examination" and "responsibility" of the officials' actions mean.
Dnevni list Danas asked Sarah el Sarag, lawyer and candidate, about it Student lists, and she says that the goal is "prosecution of specific individuals based on evidentiary actions" and that there will be no political purges and mass dismissals.
El Sarag explains that the president, deputies, members of the government, state secretaries, judges of higher courts, chiefs of prosecutions, directors and chiefs of police, heads of intelligence services and all officials who exceed their powers, cover up crimes or use illegal force will be under scrutiny.
Furthermore, it would also look at those who in the public sector independently decide on amounts of money above a certain threshold. The main mechanism, he says, is confiscation of property resulting from a criminal act.
However, this has nothing to do with lustration, but is a normal part of criminal sanctions that is theoretically possible even now - but, under this regime, it is a dead letter.
The only sentence in Sara el Sarag's answers that smacks of lustration reads: "The court will be able to impose a security measure prohibiting the persons responsible from performing certain activities."
Is that revenge?
In her statement to N1, she said in a little more detail that it could be a matter of banning her from holding a public office for ten years. "I would leave it for later, considering that the draft of that law is in progress. That program is made by people who are experts and who saw the flaws of the previous lustration law that was not implemented," says El Sarag.
The idea of lustration is actually to attack people who cannot be accused of specific criminal acts, but only of participation in the regime of injustice.
After the unification of Germany, for example, the commission led by the later Federal President Joachim Gauck based on the archives of the infamous Stasi imposed a ban on working in the public sector for thousands of associates and informants of the East German secret service. They were no longer allowed to enter the judiciary, schools, or clerical service.
Although anger against the regime in Serbia is great, some warn that there must be no revanchism.
"A balance must be found between the demand to achieve justice - which the citizens of Serbia expect - and political revanchism. This is the fine balancing act that should be found in some law or other legal act that would enable this protection of democracy," constitutional law professor Violeta Beširević told N1.
And what about everyone else?
So many questions remain open. What, for example, about school principals who are firing teachers these days, even though they may find some basis for it in the law, but it is clear that they are doing it along political lines?
What about thousands of people who collect capillary votes in public companies and force employees to rallies? What about "journalists" who deal with propaganda and slandering people all day long, but no concrete crime can be found? And so on.
What is the Student List really planning, if it wins the elections, it might write in the entire program that has not yet been published or in the draft law.
Then it will be seen whether the mythical lustration will finally come or whether Serbia will continue to revolve around it, and will, and will not, and maybe, and all the way around, like a procession in ancient Greece or Rome.
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