Impass in Yugoslavia
Is the U.S. ready to lift the embargo?
BY MICHEL COLLON
Belgrade, Thursday, Sept. 28, 2000, 1 p.m.
Kostunica, 48.9 percent, Milosevic 38.6 percent. The State Election Commission has finally
published the definitive vote count. The victory of the incumbent
coalition in the parliamentary elections has been confirmed. But the same coalition was
for the most part beaten in local elections for the administration of Belgrade
and other cities.
On the other hand, in the presidential elections Milosevic just managed to stay in
contention for a second round. Although the 10 percent difference will apparently
make it difficult to reverse the vote, as we explained yesterday.
How will the votes for the other candidates play out. The radical Nikolic obtained 5.8
percent; most should go to Milosevic. The last candidate of the right wing,
Mihailovic, got 2.9 percent. Normally, he is in the same tendency as the opposition DOS
but the feeling of having been betrayed by them could lead a part of his
voters to abstain. On the other hand, if Washington pressures the Montenegrin government
to renounce its boycott of the elections, Kostunica could find new
support there. We shall see.
The DOS victory demonstration gathered many people last evening in the city center. The
200,000 claimed by the BBC obviously was raised for the sake of making
propaganda. I did not make a systematic estimation, in any case difficult because there
was no organized parade, the people walked in all different directions and
retraced their steps. Terazije and Trg Republike Squares were filled thoroughly as well as
the neighboring streets but one could move around easily. For a rough
estimate, I’d say 40-50,000.
Prague and Belgrade: not measuring with the same thermometers?
So, in Belgrade there was a demonstration waving the small flags of G17--this group of
right-wing economists who authored a program that would submit the
Yugoslav economy to the will of the IMF and the multinationals. Even if the majority of
the demonstrations were hardly aware of it. The paradox is that at the same
moment in Prague the Czechs and young people who had come from all over the world were
demonstrating against the policies of the same IMF which, applied for
years in other countries, had plunged millions of human beings in misery.
There, the Czech government sent tanks, 15,000 cops, 2,000 soldiers and brutally arrested
422 demonstrators. What would we have heard as a concert of
international calumnies against the “Milosevic dictatorship” is these arrests
had taken place in Belgrade and not in Prague. Besides, the Western press, about which
certain people still have many illusions, has lied in volumes by claiming that the people
arrested in Prague were mainly foreigners. In fact, 392 were Czechs.
Youth, ads and illusions
We’ve analyzed the reasons for Kostunica’s success in preceding reports. We add
here that Albright’s threats to bomb the country seem also to have had an
impact. That explains why it was an opposition newspaper that spread the news.
The attitude of the youth seems to be an even more important reason. The older generations
have acquired a precious historical experience. Many lived under
fascism or have heard their relatives speak about it. And they have also experienced the
resistance, then the enthusiasm of the first years of construction of a new
society with all its accomplishments and social advantages. They know what they have to
lose by opening the door to savage capitalism.
But the youths have only experienced these last years of sanctions and a hard life. They
are fascinated by the Western lifestyle: Nike, Adidas, CocaCola and
McDonalds. “Can we jam all these TV images that are sent by sattelites?” a SPS
official asked me. “They would consider us a repressive regime.”
The problem is not at all simple and exists in many countries. Western capitalism presents
through its advertising an image of a consumers’ paradise, but these ads
don’t show the unemployment and welfare lines growing longer even in the so-called
advanced societies, these ads don’t show the ever increasing number of families
who are unable to pay their bills, the youths who are obliged to continue living with
their parents because with no jobs, they can’t afford to pay rent for an apartment.
Without speaking of the terrible misery in certain countries of the East or of the Third
World that have been delivered to the domination of the Western
multinationals.
How to help these young people understand the difficulties of the current system is a vast
problem for the left the world over. “It is certain that we haven’t yet found
the right way to speak to these youths,” this SP official admitted.
Second round or not? What will Washington do? Where are things at present? Kostunica still
refuses to participate in the second round, affirming that he has
obtained more than 50 percent. This risks to hurt him among the voters, I’m told. In
fact, this decision has been made--one again--in Washington. In this new
situation, the U.S. could seen a door opened to an honorable exit, a sort of compromise.
The government staying the same color, but Kostunica replacing Milosevic
in the presidency. In that case would the embargo that hits the population be lifted and
international relations normalized?
But does the U.S. want a solution or is it searching for the collapse and submission of
the country and its economy?
If Kostunica were elected president and was unable to obtain the lifting of the embargo,
it would be he who inherits a serious credibility problem.
Michel Collon is an author of two books on the Balkan crisis and a resolute anti-war and anti-NATO activist
Anti-Imperialist League -- www.ptb.be/international/indexfr.html
posted 6 October 2000
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