The blue skunk blog, Doug Johnson
The same show repeats every March 12. Politicians race each other to explain to us that they were very close, even best friends, with the late prime minister Djindjic. Others, who predicted (and wished for?) his death, and, later, hung the name of Ratko Mladic over his (literally, in Zoran Djindjic Boulevard), can’t claim that they were close to him. They can, however, claim to follow his vision and explain his ideals to us.
This whole circus is completed by various walks for Zoran, organized by tiny leaders – by-products of divisions within the Democratic Party. This makes me sick. I see these walks as an abuse of citizens’ feelings and their need to show those waving the hawthorn stake (regardless of whether those stakes are real or wrapped into an author’s article in a respectable weekly magazine) that their waving is in vain and that they won’t fall for propaganda (at least this time). Then the by-product leaders appear at the front of the column and the media show them leading citizens in honoring the late prime minister.
That’s why I don’t participate in walks organized by any party. I won’t allow them to use my feelings, and my need to give everyone who celebrated on March 12, 2003 the finger by my presence, for collecting a few measly political points. I won’t provide them with legitimacy. I won’t line up behind them. They don’t deserve to lead anyone anywhere, and they have proved it.
That’s why I walk alone on March 12. I hope that more of us will do the same and that we will meet somewhere on our way to the Alley of Distinguished Citizens, and, after we have left the scum at the end of the column, we may meet in a better Serbia.
Translated by Marijana Simic
Peščanik.net, 17.03.2015.