Many expect Predrag Marković, the acting president of Serbia, to use his constitutional powers, not to sign this controversial law and return it to the deputies for reconsideration and voting. Bagerista Joe, one of the 5th of October icons, offers to replace Slobodan Milosevic in the prison in Scheveningen, because here on October XNUMXth everything was in vain, and life seems to be better there in The Hague prison than outside.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS: The fall of Slobodan Milošević's regime
Due to the great interest of citizens in voluntarily going to The Hague, the Committee for Human Rights in Bor has published a public advertisement in which those interested (there are currently more than thirty of them) are given additional explanations on how to get to the Netherlands. Each candidate must fulfill at least three conditions: that he is a citizen of the Republic of Serbia, that he is of legal age and that he admits guilt for the committed criminal acts of genocide or war crimes. All registered "candidates" for The Hague from Bor, a city where the average income is somewhere around eight thousand dinars, hope that they will be "noticed" by the Tribunal and look forward to what would await them in that case - a monthly financial compensation in the amount of the salary of a representative in the republican assembly, the expenses of family members going to The Hague paid twice a month, the expenses of telephone bills for communication with the detainee paid.
The news about the Bosnian volunteers for The Hague, published in a daily newspaper, is one of the milder reactions to the recently adopted Law on the Rights of Hague Accused and Their Families. Initiatives (mainly non-governmental organizations and individual parties) to assess the constitutionality of this law are being announced from various parties these days; ironic petitions are signed in the city squares to help the "poor people of The Hague" in which the robbed and unfortunate people undertake to support their oppressors; old stories about Mark's crates and Bambiland are being told again; those from DSS are accused of looking more and more like Mira's flower in their hair and sabotaging October 5; various contact shows on television were garnished with text messages about Kostunica, who returned Milosevic and Seselj to Serbia and indirectly admitted that the state behind them could also be responsible for genocide; the adoption of such a law and the financial aid to the accused in The Hague was also crossed with the information that the Army of the SCG does not have a roof over its head for 22.000 soldiers; in some places, requests were also heard to direct the money intended for the Hague defendants to the burned Hilandar or Kosovo... Mass protests are also announced.
JoeLESSMILOSEVIC: Many expect Predrag Marković, the acting president of Serbia, to use his constitutional powers, not to sign this disputed law and return it to the deputies for reconsideration and voting. Bagerista Joe, one of the 5th of October icons, offers to replace Slobodan Milosevic in the prison in Scheveningen because here on October 25th everything was in vain, and it seems that life is better there in the Hague prison than outside. The mayor of Kragujevac said that he is ashamed of the country where he lives and where such laws are adopted. Dušan Vuković from Kraljevo, a member of the non-governmental organization of families of victims and victims of wars during the XNUMXs (his son Aleksandar was killed during the NATO aggression), says with a lot of bitterness that this law provides money to the biggest culprits of wars, while at the same time the state has not yet responded to the demands that the mothers of the dead be provided with pensions after XNUMX years of service, or the injured parents receive free treatment at the Medical Center. Vuković says that the eventual refusal of the Law on Aid to Hague Accused will force the families of war victims to start a hunger strike in front of the Serbian Government building.
All these angry reactions of a large part of the public, as well as the very way in which the law was adopted in the Serbian Parliament (even more debates followed its adoption), show that this extremely sensitive Hague topic was rushed into last week in a completely amateurish manner, without almost any political preparation and even less assessment of what can be gained. Or the assessment was completely wrong. At a time when the whole story about the disputed shelter was just heating up, the emphasis was placed on the so-called the right of the poor and the equality of all citizens before the Constitution. That story was later completely lost and the "poor people" were recognized exclusively in the form of Slobodan Milošević and Vojislav Šešelj. Most of the critics of the law claimed that everything was done in order to take care of Milošević, Šešelj and their family members in The Hague, because the rest of the accused were mostly already taken care of with some kind of help. It was only later that the explanation (more like a kind of extraction) came that Milosevic's son and wife cannot count on what this law offers them because they are under investigation.
On the morning when the law was adopted, it seemed that everyone from the ruling coalition would vote for it, and, of course, the radicals and socialists who cared about the law the most. The draft law was signed by 191 deputies that morning (later 146 of them voted because in the meantime the deputies of Vuk and Velja were against it, and those from G17 plus abstained), while in the parliamentary corridors it was said that the DS would too, if the amendments of this party, could raise his hand for the Hague law. A few days before the vote in the Serbian Parliament, some officials of the DS really openly and loudly thought (just not for the newspapers) about how such a law might make sense, because the accused could then more easily opt for a voluntary departure to The Hague. Everything ended with DSS, radicals and socialists voting for the controversial law, seen immediately as a new coalition. On that occasion, SPO leader Vuk Drašković even warned Koštunica through the newspaper that he prepared the Hague law in secret and that he brazenly played with his coalition partners, adding that perhaps it would be better if such a government did not exist at all.
Vladimir Goati from the Institute of Social Sciences claimed on that occasion that the ruling coalition exists only formally (technical government) and that Kostunica's government actually represents a political platform close to that of the SRS (ideological government). The president of the Democratic Center, which is slowly drowning in the DS, Dragoljub Mićunović, these days called for the unification of all democratic forces in society, including non-parliamentary parties (he did not rule out the request for early elections) in order to prevent the spread of the former course of nationalism and announced the defense of democratic reforms. From various sides, there were requests to draw a line of demarcation towards this type of government, in which the Kostunicas start a sentence, and then Seselje's radicals finish and shape it to the end. Political analyst Đorđe Vukadinović says in an interview for "Vreme" that in the last few years a lot has been done that really strategically strengthened the radicals. It seems that not everyone is sufficiently aware of these radical dangers even now - the political opponents of the DSS are pushing this party towards the radicals, and the DSS itself is helping Seselj's party by passing such laws, even though there "will not be too much bread to eat", as Vukadinović says.
AND RECREATION: Scheveningen
GDEBURNING: To all these objections, those from DSS seem to have no counterplay and arguments to offer as a serious answer and most often repeat that their government will go deeper in reforms than the previous one, so they invite critics to judge them on the basis of the achieved results. The law on assistance to Hague indictees certainly does not belong to deep reform measures and priorities, it was adopted a day before Washington's decision on possible financial support for Belgrade, which is why many experienced it as a desperate political message, a finger in the eye of the local and international public and the continuation of some kind of Serbian changes. That law first of all requires an answer to a very simple question - where is the Hague "burning" right now. Of course, the Hague has been "burning" for quite a long time, but on the other hand - Belgrade is being asked to send someone from the list of indictees again (Croats recently filled a plane to The Hague and sent six indictees there), or to find General Mladić and thus make or break this story. At the same time, there is too much mud of all kinds around the Hague to tread on that terrain so easily and without the risk of getting stuck somewhere, which the previous government in Dosov was convinced of on several occasions.
Due to the mostly unforced answers to most of the questions that arose after this adoption of the "Hague Law", the public was left with quite a wide field for guessing what this law was intended to achieve. One of the explanations that could be heard these days - how the law entered the procedure quickly because it was prepared quickly - did not seem too convincing. According to another theory, Koštunica paid off part of the debt to the SPS, which supports his government, by institutionalizing aid to the Hague defendants, and in the future the socialists will be relieved of the obligation to provide money for the defense of Slobodan Milosevic every month, especially now that the costs of that defense are starting to rise. quite magnified. Those who like to see everything two or three steps further claim that the Prime Minister intended to appease the radicals and socialists through the concessions surrounding the adoption of this law, so that tomorrow when the time comes, they will vote for changes to the Constitution, because it is obvious that without their support it is impossible to to the new constitution. There is also a story that the concession to the "patriotic forces" was made this time with a slightly different intention, because at some point a new sending of the accused to The Hague will have to follow, so the law should also be viewed in the function of softening that part of public opinion before the unpleasant moves that follow. In a similar direction, there are also announcements that serious negotiations with the indicted generals regarding their voluntary departure to The Hague could soon follow. Generals Pavković and Lazarević immediately announced that, as far as they were concerned, such a law should not have been adopted - they say that they are not defending Serbia in The Hague because they allegedly defended it back in 1999 in Kosovo.
If the law was really adopted as it was officially explained, in order to give the defendants the opportunity to properly prepare for their defense, then it was done quite sloppily and (from a purely political point of view) harmful to those who accepted the job. The Hague defendants, no matter what anyone thinks privately about their part in war crimes and their contribution to the weakening of this country, it is really necessary to enable them to have normal conditions for preparing their defense. Some of them are charged with the most serious crimes, such as genocide, and the outcome of these trials is not something that this country should not be interested in. Of course, not to hide someone's crimes, but to get to the full truth about the events of the war. In the adopted law, however, there is not a single word about the rights of the defendants to more easily access the state archives or obtain all the important documents they need in order to be on an equal footing with the prosecution in an effort to find the truth. The entire law went in the completely opposite direction, mainly taking into account the material satisfaction of the accused and their families, and everything quickly slipped into a story about reaching into the pockets of taxpayers.
IMALI5. OCTOBER: In some criticisms of the controversial law, there is sometimes quite a bit of hypocrisy, some demagoguery, even deliberate twisting of facts or quick forgetting, which does not in any way dispute the general impression that the Serbian Parliament adopted a political and damaging act last week. Đorđe Vukadinović notes that among some of the loudest critics of the Law there are also those who persistently said that we are worse than our neighbors in everything. Most of our neighbors with a similar torture in The Hague, says Vukadinović, have long since adopted identical laws on the rights of the accused, and now the same circles here claim - what concerns us, what is being done in the environment, why should we have such laws.
In a recent guest appearance on Radio B92, GSS President Goran Svilanović, otherwise one of those who opposed this law the most in the Parliament, primarily because of the political messages sent through it, admitted that for no country, even one as poor as this like ours, the assistance provided by the Law will not be too much of a financial burden for Hague defendants. If everything were to be calculated in detail, it is quite possible that this sum is incomparably smaller than the one that will have to be paid, after the court decision, to the MPs whose mandates were illegally taken away at one time. Citizens of SCG who are currently in The Hague (there are 23 of them there) have received some assistance (not all), and the total sum for those expenses will not be increased many times in the future. Until now, the costs of the defense of Milosevic, who is not recognized by the Hague Court, have mostly been covered by the socialists. Mostly. There were cases that some months with money (admittedly, not from taxpayers) came to the rescue, some of whom could never have been expected, because they participated in the packing of the former president of the FRY for the trip to The Hague, and later in the entire stories also found their own political calculation. We are talking about secret agreements that are hard for voters to forgive and that will never be known too much because no one is interested in talking about them.
The adoption of the new law and especially the jubilation of the radicals and socialists (one of them has recently become an assistant minister), has once again updated the stories about the cancellation of almost all the achievements of October 5, while it is usually not taken into account that these achievements were seriously attacked and endangered and various "mangupi" in the Dosov ranks. Radicals and socialists, encouraged by the support of the DSS regarding the controversial law, are spreading the impression that October 5 was actually an ordinary incident and that they should now continue where they left off. High SPS official Dušan Bajatović goes even further and says in a TV show that it is now necessary to determine the responsibility of all those who illegally sent Milosevic to The Hague. "One of them has already paid with his head," concludes Bajatović, whose statement certainly deserves some other reactions, apart from the reaction of viewers in "Impression of the Week".
In a country with so many uncared for and distressed, it is not so easy to pass laws like this one on supporting Hague defendants. Or at least prepare the law incomparably better and explain to people how the "poor's right" is applied and the state's obligation to protect all its citizens. This way everything can really look like a hoax. General Vlada Trifunović, for example, still lives in that hellish Bristol Hotel in a two-by-two room (much worse than the one in Scheveningen). He was tried here because he did not want to, as the commander of the Varaždin Corps, in a hopeless situation, destroy a city and perish foolishly with his soldiers whose lives he saved. He lives without the right to a full pension and an apartment, his family is scattered around the world and there is no one to pay them even a bus ticket to visit him. Those who recently adopted the Law on the Rights of Hague Accused may say that such comparisons are incorrect, but they must also take into account the messages they send to people like General Trifunović. They are not telling him that it would have been incomparably better for him personally if he had been accused of war crimes in The Hague.
Rules
One of the first things that happens when someone arrives at the prison in Scheveningen is an official determination of their financial status. The costs of Hague trials are enormous, trials last on average more than three years and in some cases even property or cash of around 300.000 euros may not be enough to cover these costs. The expenses of the majority of Hague defendants were therefore covered by the Tribunal. Last year, the competent services of the Tribunal estimated, for example, that the former president of Serbia, Milan Milutinović, can finance part of his defense costs himself. Milutinović thus became one of the few defendants who has to financially cover his own defense together with the Tribunal. Slobodan Milošević once refused to recognize the Court, and thus the usual Hague review of the property he owns, so he has to worry about how he will cover the costs of the trial.
New appointments: the government of Serbia continued to dismiss and appoint personnel, and resignations are also arriving
Aleksandar Šoštar, the newly appointed director of the Sports Administration in the Ministry of Education and Sports, accepted this job so that sport in our country would take its rightful place. Talking about the plans, he says that the new sports law will put things in place.
Aleksandar Šoštar is a former water polo national team member, once one of the best goalkeepers in the world and, until his appointment, the president of the SCG Water Polo Association and the president of VK Partizan. He was born on January 21, 1964. He played 365 games for the national team with which he won many trophies: the World Cup in Perth in 1991, the Olympic throne in 1988, the European Championship in 1991 and 2001, the World Cup in 1987 and 1989.
He is a mechanical engineer by profession.
Pavle Vučković was dismissed from the position of acting director of NIS, who will be replaced by Željko Popović. The new director of NIS was born 53 years ago, graduated in 1975 from the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade. He specializes in banking and finance. He started his professional career in 1976 in the foreign trade affairs of EI Niš. From 1981 to 2000, he held several managerial positions in Beobanca. In December 2000, he joined NIS as deputy director of NIS-Jugopetrol for financial matters, and since April 2002, as assistant general director of NIS, he has been in charge of finances. He speaks Russian and English. He is married and the father of two children.
Dragojl Bežalac will be succeeded as director of EPS by Vladimir Đorđević from DSS, while the president of the Supervisory Board is Jaroslav Živanić from Nova Serbia.
Veljko Dimitrijević was appointed instead of Dragoljub Milojković as the director of Srbijavod, and Miloš Tomić, a graduate in agricultural engineering who is from the G17 plus list, was appointed as the president of the Supervisory Board.
Instead of Radoslav Petković, the new director of the Institute for Textbooks and Teaching Aids is Radoš Ljušić, a historian and member of the Democratic Party of Serbia (see "Character and Work").
Branko Jočić, the new director of the Republic Directorate for Roads, is the president of the Financial Supervisory Board of New Serbia. Jočić was born in 1961 in Pančevo. He completed primary and secondary school in Pancevo, graduated from the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade, majoring in Monetary Economics and Banking, where he also obtained his master's degree ("Modern market concept of financing pension funds"). In the period from 1989 to 1994, he worked at DP HIP Petrohemija. From 1995 to 1996, he worked in the private company Venid from Belgrade, when he moved to the Republic Pension and Disability Insurance Fund, where he works as a senior expert for contribution control. During 2002, he was the head of the department for economic affairs of work and employment in the Federal Secretariat for Labour, Health and Social Welfare. Last year, he was the director of the JU Bank branch in Pancevo. He speaks German and English. He is married and has two sons.
The election of Goran Jovović, the head of the Jagodin SPS committee group, as the assistant minister for information technology in the Ministry of Justice caused the greatest public controversy. Some claimed that with his election, the Socialist Party of Serbia formally entered the Government of Serbia, and Vlajko Senić, spokesman for the SPO, accused the DSS of "violating the coalition agreement" of the parties participating in the work of the Government by appointing Jovović. Ivica Dačić (SPS) and Nebojša Bakarec (DSS) replied that Jovović was chosen as an expert based on his expertise, and not as an official of the SPS.
Radovan Kalabić, master of philology, journalist and publicist, who published a book, was appointed as the first man of the Emigrant Registry Serbianemigration, which has seen three editions so far. "My primary problems are money and space," says Kalabić.
Last week, the press announced that Đorđe Mihaljević, Assistant Minister of Justice of Serbia, resigned for personal reasons and left the Government of Serbia on March 26, less than twenty days after the formation of the new government. The Ministry of Justice did not want to comment on the assistant minister's reasons. However, "Glas" announces that Mihaljević negligently killed his girlfriend 14 years ago, for which he was convicted in 1991. According to this newspaper, Mihaljević fired a shot from a pistol at the celebration of Mladenac. The bullet ricocheted and hit his girlfriend, who died from her injuries.
During the last week, the public prosecutor of the Republic, Đorđe Ostojić, for personal reasons, asked the Assembly of Serbia to relieve him of his duties. "I have held the highest position in the Public Prosecutor's Office of Serbia since March 2003. I believe that I performed this public prosecutor's activity, which I performed in a very difficult time, successfully within the scope of objective possibilities," said Ostojić.
Former Minister of Justice Vladan Batic assessed that Ostojic resigned because he did not want to be a "trafficking object" and because he suffered pressure, and his dismissal was announced, as well as the abolition of special courts and prosecutor's offices for organized crime and war crimes.
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How were the cases kept out of control, the investigations directed towards the citizens who sought protection, and the prosecutors were left without answers from the police? Branko Stamenković talks about the findings of the commission of the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office, the responsibility of his colleagues and what is needed for the institutions to work according to the law again
Who now decides on the Government and the program, the plenum or the deputy? There are different views on this in the Student Movement and among the people on the list, but a middle solution is being sought, "Vreme" learns. Be that as it may, the program of over a thousand pages already exists
The outgoing government treats the state like an apartment from which it moves out after losing a dispute. And all the time she shouts loudly that her neighbors are demolishing the building
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How much money from the Growth Plan has been irretrievably lost for us, how much has been frozen and how much is still waiting for us? What should Serbia do in order to receive these European funds and what will the citizens get from it? Is a new chapter in Brussels-Belgrade relations beginning?
At the moment when the institutions of the Republic are destroyed, when Vučić's octopus is still alive, when people are disgusted by the injustice and the stench left behind by the Essenes regime, we have, as Machiavelli said, only civic virtue as the fuel with which we can return to the beginning
The four independent members of REM are an example of perseverance and civic responsibility. Rodoljub Šabić even, upon leaving the premises of REM, after the sentencing of the Informer, experienced that the Essenes insulted him, hit him with their hands and feet. But that too will soon be over
Vučić pardoned the batterers and Dijana Hrkalović. The election winners should abolish the sultan's power that allows one man to run afoul of the entire judicial system
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