Manifesto: What happened to Serbia?

(my last of the sort to be found within these pages)
(the text is yet to be fully proofread)

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing Serbia that it was doing better than other CEE countries and thus not needing reforms for its own good

Before I go to the crux of this manifesto I feel a need to first clear some of its background. Many people in Serbia over the past 20 years were either members, sympathizers, or believers that DS is a chief if not the party to take Serbia into the 21 century and achieving the necessary modernization through thorough reforms.

Some of us were in one or another category since 1991. But only until few years back. Now it seems that the pro-reform forces in Serbia need to reinvent themselves in order to achieve any tangible edge and capacity to do whats necessary.

Over the 1990s the wars of disintegration of the Titoist Yugoslavia clouded the Serbian political sky as well as any clear judgment regarding the roles of the changing political parties' spectrum in Serbia. The changes of October 2000 rescued DS (and DSS and some others) from losing the reformist role that many imposed on them since the 1989. After the assassination of PM Djindjic and fallen reformists’ hopes, an election of Tadic as the next DS party chief and later as the President of the country did the similar trick and gave to many people new hope.

Unfortunately the final blow came when Tadic performed a coup de etat within DS from his Ministry of Defense office surrounded by his close collaborators at the same time purging the party of the not trusted cadre. Some time later, he was elected President of the country, assisted by by the foreign aid sponsored and executed GO TO (“go to vote”) completely partisan campaign (still within the ream of democratic proces though). His Fall 2004 trip to Kosovo started to reveal and de-mask his politics by him during that trip giving attribute “Serbian” to creaks, trees, and hills across Kosovo, much alike Milosevic some 15 years earlier. Finally, Tadic and DS aligning with SRS and SPS over the issue of creating most shameful constitution in the modern European history (with cheated ballot process supported by US sponsored CESID), most definitely marked in any healthy political mind a closure of gathering a sufficient set of evidence that Tadic and his DS is not up to the mandate than many are entrusting in their hands. The mandate of leading the true reforms in this country.

Subsequent episodes of him becoming the biggest nationalist leader and the protector of Kosovo from Kosovars themselves as well as the most recent marriage with never reformed and still Milosevic praising-SPS, merely represents what was to be expected. One could see two phases in development of Tadic political posture evolved, the first one until the new Constitution during which Tadic was seating at the fence, and the second after and during which he removed his gloves and went into a value-less politics (colored by nationalism) free of real reform substance. Just alike Milosevic's. Killing whatever there was within DS in terms of democratic internal party process and decision making may prove in the long run as one of the most hidden political crimes of Boris Tadic. I’ll stop here short from discussing some of SRS's or SPS' accusations of DS about the mafia background of Tadic and some DS members, or those of General Grahovac that Tadic is a mere extended hand of the secret services and never truly (unlike in other neighboring countries) reformed security and defense sector in Serbia. So, this is where I am coming from.

Until recently many thought that LDP represents precisely the line this article is about to bore you with here. But something changed this year, either they ran out of money and hope and decided to give in and sell their backsides to DS, or they are simply more sensible, honest, and intelligent than most of those who took LDP away from DS decadent politics. How is it possible that LDP is ready to sacrifice its authentic politics to those of DS that adopted the entire DSS and some of SRS platforms, that went into etatist and collectivist waters charted in the 19th century and leaving behind its focus on bettering individual life and achieving modernity through serious reforms while at the same time breaking with the immediate past of Serbia littered with destruction and agony.

The above is a view and the background for this manifesto while the trigger for this somewhat inherently naïve manifesto was my surprising conclusion that there are more and more people these days (summer 2008) in Serbia that are stating and/or supporting the new DS+SPS+LDP chant: "Parties and ideologies are not important, people and (work and issues) promises are.”

This represents not only an obvious attempt to revolutionary change contemporary political thought and good governance practices, but also an expression of naked truth and a statement of the obvious: Whatever existing Serbian reform and democratization efforts have been suspended with this new thought, in favor for something yet to be defined and find solution for.

It seems that there is a need to agree about who devastating the situation is, clearly define the set of problems, and only then create vision and a set of solutions for moving forward the right direction. Hence, saying that the absence of the obvious alternative justifies the current situation represents merely a defeatist approach to the entire problem and will perpetuate our agony with DS and other Serbia pseudo reforms.

One could start a manifesto about present day Serbia with trying to summarize its reality, in fact, in Serbia you’ll presently find the following:

=People vote for parties not for their direct representatives as in many other democracies
=Hence nobody feels accountable to people between the votes and they blindly obey their parties
=Parties are authoritarian-like in their organization and are fully commanded by their leaders
=Parties arbitrarily choose their MPs and make them legally bound (unheard of elsewhere)
=MPs have no voting/political freedom
=Parliament has no oversight of executive function
=Parliament makes no law but merely is approving them by the parties commands
=For years Parliament is not passing such very important laws (land ownership, family, trafic, waste,etc.)
=At this pace of legislation Serbia will not only not ever enter the EU but lose the SAA associated status and trade benefits
=President of the country is the biggest party leader at the same time
=President chooses MP and appoints most of the government
=President also appoints most of the top judges
=Judiciary nor parliament has independent budget not supreme control over their portfolios
=Judiciary is idle,corrupted and expensive, judges dance as parties sing, while the Serbian judiciary embodies all Kafka was writing some 100 years ago

Therefore: President and sometimes few other parties’ leaders command the entire government (legislative/executive/judiciary)
Consensual and value based decision making, policy process, minority opinion, and other procedural mechanism are unheard of in Serbia which functions as 19 th century limited parliamentary democracy

=Media has no corrective/oversight impact to the workings of the government
=President directly/indirectly commands over the majority of most important electronic media
Print media is not read widely
=Civil sector dramatically weakened while many of its players were bought by the government and neutralized
=Foreign democratization pressure weakened in favor of stability due to the continuous use of SRS as chief but false foe

=Economy in Serbia is largely note privatized
=Those privatized to the foreign companies are solvent and major exporters
=Those none transparently and for-nothing privatized to local gang lords fetched no revenue
=These tycoons became shadow government makers and new Serbian economic elites
=The same tycoons pay back to the parties and leaders without any respect of the law of financing political parties public sees nothing, money goes left and right completely unregulated
=All privation revenues were spend for the regular expenses rather than invested
=Serbian budget is commanded by the parties is not transparent and was not accounted for for past seven years
=Serbian financial system has no modern budgeting systems of planning, monitoring and accountability since parties do not seek these
=The percentage of the Serbian state economy within the GDP is absolutely amazingly high and tailors parties cadre need for employment and economic gain
=Thus no decentralization in Serbia as most of to be shared by the elites economic resources are in Belgrade and Novi Sad
=And without decentralization and different voting system empowered people across of Serbia lack agents necessary for change of their miserable lives
=The miserable side of this life is kept largely unknown to people by Serbian media and the government so only random worldwide stats charts show this.

The current economic policies in Serbia are employed by the interest of well paying importers' lobby that thrives in Serbia. By artificially keeping Dinar strong the government is killing the exports and making wealthy their importing friends and sponsors. The value of Dinar is kept constant for several years now while the aggregate Euro zone inflation is at more 15% and home one for at least 30%. While they, the few, are becoming reach the state is impoverished by drawing expensive international credits and privatization money in order to pay for these imports. This finite economy has to collapse once the crocks completely drain the available resources at the expense of all taxpayers in Serbia and many generations to come.

These are only some basic normative, procedural, and economic points for discussion. The absence in Serbia of modern day values achieved by developed world such as women and children rights, minorities rights, environmental or community values, patient rights, the way we threat death and life, are not even mentioned here. Let alone rising the question how and if Serbians have faced and evaluated the results of its deeds during the recent past.

Regarding these values and progress about pushing these forward Serbian is arguably still places in the early 20 th century if nor in 19 th. Etatism and collectivism are the axioms and anachronic national building and xenophobia the poles of the present day Serbian national psychic. This 20 years old disoriented nightmare during which the Serbian national body was unsuccessfully searching for the way forward has been re-accelerated by DS and its politics of cohabitation and compromise.

To cover its misdeeds and lack of vision that would correspond to the goals of creating out of Serbia an open society characterized by the modern libertarian's values, DS-led elites have invented a new chant and dogma that merely rants about the reforms and insists on the past greater Serbian nationalist goals, Kosovo being in its center.

Modernity is a long distance away from present day Serbia, even larger problem is that the current elites are not about to merely occupy the right path. They turned at some points disoriented and at other points autistic to the real needs of Serbian and neighboring peoples alike.

Their political impotence to come up with an efficient and viable vision and strategy fitting to the Serbian reform challenges, silently for many external observers, imploded into continuation of the Milosevic's politics that followed the process of Titoist Yugoslavia's disintegration.

They cunningly hid their economic (privatization) rampage and feudal division of rent yielding economic opportunities by politically (again like in 1990's) hijacking national public agenda and thus monopolizing lives of ordinary people. This has been done by controlling media and purposefully hate mongering and inflaming the popular sentiments in an attempt to turn it away from the real problems of unemployment and hardship of life (especially for minorities and those not economically gravitational towards the gigantic state apparatus) in present day Serbia. As many times before worn out topics of national question replaces the real modern issues.

In the mean time, young and educated and not integrated in the kleptocratic and clientage party system, that was perpetuated for past 20 years in Serbia, will seek their fortunes elsewhere; Serbia will be left with its careerist and values-free elites, often product of the negative selection; Pensioners will stay without those needed to earn their pensions; While the semi literate nation will be happy the way it is living: in absence of the modern day society goods such as decent and affluent life.

To make something clear, it is very obvious that the Western world helped Serbia tremendously. After all, since 1915 when US helped Serbia not to literally starve, the West was the best friends and benefactors to Serbia. Titoist Yugoslavia survived comfortably the way it did in spite of the poor economic performance precisely due to the US cheap credits. The same way, over the past 8 years the Western world extended credits to Serbia thus making the "carrot" bing always more plentiful than the length of the "stick".

Besides the finance and initial investments the West extended many other supports were plentiful, while the diplomatic efforts and technical support (through USAID, Norwegians, CIDA, SIDA, SIPPO, SDC, DFID, GTZ, ADA and others) was simply gigantic (see Thomas Charoters’ The Weakest Chain).

Therefore, one can say that so much was invested in DS and Tadic and yet it seems that the cause of pushing vigorously for economic reforms and opening and democratization of societies (yes, plural) in Serbia was betrayed at worse and failed at best.

As it was not enough that soviet stile bureaucracy installed before 1948, as well as post-1910s Serbian apartheid-ism in Kosovo, still shows resilience in face of the lukewarm reform some 60 years later, Serbian political elites including of so called reformist DS still flock to Moscow for opinion about major state and political decisions. Many accuse US of the exactly same crime, negative influence to Serbian society and politics, but I would say they at least pay for it while Moscow is asking for monetary compensations through buying Serbian Oil Industry and other visible and note so visible to Serbian public economic and etatist wheelings and dealings.

In fact the Russian influence to Serbia has moved from bad to worse. It was difficult to like forcefully thrown at Serbian pupils all the Soviet/Russian stuff that has been thrown. In most general terms, many people grew up in Serbia disliking the way Moscow influence (-ed) Serbian society, culture and politics, and think that they were/are the worse thing ever happened to Serbia in terms of the unavoidable foreign influence by much bigger countries and cultures. Turkish and German influence by contrast I view as brief and terrific (obviously apart for the holocaust and other atrocities and losses).

The problem is that, believe it or not, the Soviet-designed ways are still all around as, from the army and secret services, to the militant health system and all present partism and clientige a la Putin. Actually, most of the present day Russian exports to Serbia sucks. Somehow only products of the darker Russia comes this way since these unfortunately have buried most of the hopes for building open society in Russia itself.

It is actually most amazing how Titoist Yugoslavia was not part of the so called Soviet Bloc (Romania and Albania were neither, in fact) and yet it is among the last ones to still dramatically suffer because of the soviet social-political architecture installed in the Titoist Yugoslavia before he renegaded from Staljin.

This is somewhat ironic too, Yugoslavs allegedly lived much better than any East Europeans and yet they are (still in 2008) fighting their way through the fog of Soviet styled problems. Socio-political elites in Visegrad countries (PL,CR,SL,and HU) somehow managed to create during the 1980s a post-soviet vision for their societies on the basis of opening their societies, reforming the economies, and ripping the state wide open in search for the mall functions that obstruct the implementation of the ideas of free society and competitive economy.

This kind of vision always lacked in Serbia. Their elites never had the strength nor capacity to come up with it. Berlin Wall never fall in Serbia because we were convinced that it never existed and yet it did. As said in one of my favorite movies "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist". Serbia's relation to the reform was pretty much the same. They convinced themselves that they are better than other East Europeans thus eventually ending up to be the worst of all.

The past 20 years of Serbia is the history of the fight for nationalistic steering wheel that emerged from decadent Serbian intelligentsia that did nothing but lamenting over the dead Titoist Yugosoavia and not much else. DS is as much part of this as any other party with or without their butcher representatives in Bosnia and Croatia during the 1990s. While late Djinjic had some reformist vision his successor Tadic has none. Serbia will never become a modern European nation under his tighter and tighter authoritarian rule.

Bottom line, Serbia led by the so called pro-reform elites led by DS and President Boris Tadic is economically rapping blind and politically cheating Serbia and people in it, hence making them eat the seat they are all seating at, without any meaningful accountability nor shown responsibility from governing offices. The falsely hopeful situation of chanting the lies while doing nothing good will be possible and will unfortunately last as long as the cheap international credits and privatization revenues continue to come in.

But once these stop all will collapse or even worse (and more likely) Serbia will be left at the margins of international integrations left with elites not wishing to join EU as by then the joining will yield minimal gain and subventions.

Some people will strongly disagree with the above lines since they after all will not understand where all these criticism is coming from. Others will disagree because they are the part of the described set up, while some other readers will perceive the article as an expression of the author's jealousy for not being the part of the described elites.

The rest will disagree with this article because they believe in the new meaning of President od Serbia and DS Boris Tadic’s (The Putin of Serbia) compromise and appeasement, since most of them think that there is no other way forward. This piece is addressing this group only and invites them for a dialog towards moving away from the “Seselj's SRS the foe” dogma and construction of real (parties dictatorship-free) solutions necessary for the real progress of this, identity-less, collapsing, and in decadence infected country.