Excuses are always made for rulers in Serbia. They are better in person than on TV.A long time ago, people used to say: „If only Tito would find out about this“- only he never does, that is why things are going badly for us. As for Milosevic – his wife was blamed for everything. He is nice, but he’s sick. He’s got diabetes and he got the diabetes sacrificing himself for Serbian people. Dinkic says that Tadic is such a nice guy that “he wouldn’t step on a flower.” And if some flowers are still stepped on, his PR campaign is to be blamed. Someone had put too much make-up on him. He does not really mean that, he is only repeating what Saper whispers in his ear. And it has to be done, these things happen, pragmatic policy demands a lot from a leader who’s forming a pro-European government.

The question is raised, how can anyone wear make-up all the time? Are there moments when they are makeup-less? If Boris Tadic is wearing make-up all the time, then make-up is his nature. There is no hidden good nature, but all you see and hear is his natural make-up. How to recognize whether make-up is the same as nature? Make-up has to be functional in politics, that is to say if make-up stops serving a purpose than nature has spoken and what we are seeing is a clean face without a trace of make-up.

Forming a government is a pragmatic thing, so one needs only so much make-up as to have civil discussions with the party which ruined the country during the nineties.  We can grasp that much. We know that you should make generous offers. This is the usual process when divvying the spoils, that when forming a government. But it seems situation is not what it seemed. The president is not engaged in this usual and pragmatic process. When he says: “shake hands with those you confronted in the nineties and find a common solution for a better future”, that is taking the act a little too far. But when he says that “the DS and the SPS are both facing the fact that the leaders of those parties are not among them any more, and that both parties feel the pain, but that in the future they have to show readiness and provide a better chance for every citizen of Serbia”, that cannot be make-up, something functional and pragmatic, but an intention to maintain and sanction that which was the essence of the nineties.

Tadic does not want that past to die. It will endure by equating Milosevic with Djindjic.

This is not Saper, this is Tadic Himself. Forming a government with the SPS does not require a show of respect for Slobodan Milosevic. There is even less need to equate the death of a dictator to  the assassination of Serbia’s first democratic Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic. After this spontaneity, there is no longer room for Tadic’s speech, in which he states that a “historic victory” has been achieved.

The voters in this election said that they do not want the nineties back and that is how they voted, as well. They rejected the Serbian nationalist program which has been tormenting and destroying this country for two centuries. But now Tadic has got a problem. Not because he will form a coalition with a small party that remained after Milosevic, but because he is not finished with the main theme of the nineties.

It looks like what we have here is not the notorious mathematics forcing him into an unusual coalition in order to save a pro-European government. The mathematics is merely a convenient opportunity for Tadic to save nationalism from the defeat which it suffered on the May elections.

Translated by Ivica Pavlovic

Peščanik.net, 08.06.2008.


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Vesna Pešić, političarka, borkinja za ljudska prava i antiratna aktivistkinja, sociološkinja. Diplomirala na Filozofskom fakultetu u Beogradu, doktorirala na Pravnom, radila u Institutu za društvene nauke i Institutu za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju, bila profesorka sociologije. Od 70-ih pripada peticionaškom pokretu, 1982. bila zatvarana sa grupom disidenata. 1985. osnivačica Jugoslovenskog helsinškog komiteta. 1989. članica Udruženja za jugoslovensku demokratsku inicijativu. 1991. članica Evropskog pokreta u Jugoslaviji. 1991. osniva Centar za antiratnu akciju, prvu mirovnu organizaciju u Srbiji. 1992-1999. osnivačica i predsednica Građanskog saveza Srbije (GSS), nastalog ujedinjenjem Republikanskog kluba i Reformske stranke, sukcesora Saveza reformskih snaga Jugoslavije Ante Markovića. 1993-1997. jedna od vođa Koalicije Zajedno (sa Zoranom Đinđićem i Vukom Draškovićem). 2001-2005. ambasadorka SR Jugoslavije, pa SCG u Meksiku. Posle gašenja GSS 2007, njegovim prelaskom u Liberalno-demokratsku partiju (LDP), do 2011. predsednica Političkog saveta LDP-a, kada napušta ovu partiju. Narodna poslanica (1993-1997, 2007-2012).

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