Regime Aleksandar Vučić He secretly rehabilitated for a long time. A young man, rehabilitating at the same time his own war and political path, writes Filip Schwarm in the editorial of the new issue of "Vremena", which is on newsstands from this Thursday (September 3).
"His government mechanism needed the pagan myth of the 'heroic general' in order to present the entire Serbian people as his accomplices and followers," it says.
But how did Mladić go from being an energetic officer to being the master of life and death, a criminal and a cult hero? And what will survive it in this region?
"Archetypal Protector"
Mladić was not born as a national myth, Igor Božić writes in the article, but his halo was systematically built by political centers, television stations and newspapers in Belgrade and Pale, since the beginning of the wars.
"He was a JNA brat who became a Serbian general overnight and turned on the officer's shack," says one interlocutor of "Vremen", who often reported from the battlefield in the 1990s.
In public, Mladić did not appear to be part of the corrupt Palja leadership. He did not show off his money, his family lived like a typical officer's family, and his conflict with Radovan Karadzic and Momcilo Krajisnik was perceived by many as a rebellion of soldiers against war profiteers.
The people, says the reporter, did not need a politician but an archetypal protector.
Radiation lasts
In another article, Boško Jakšić writes that the memory will not fade when the general is buried.
"The only question is what kind of memory. Unfortunately, those who believe that this is the last chance for the figure of Ratko Mladic to freely float around Serbian lands, recruiting nationalists and disturbing all those who wonder how long the official government in Belgrade will benevolently patronize extremists, are mistaken."
"Let's not be fooled. The people who are mourning their hero today know very well who and what they are celebrating. The fatal radiation continues," he writes.
_Read all these articles in the infernal edition of "Vremena", which is on newsstands from Thursday (September 3). Or do _subscribe to the digital edition now
