The spitting image of us

The good news is that, regarding some issues, we resemble the world. The bad news is that, in other things, the world resembles us.

We played with fire for seven days, and on the 8^th day we got burned.

The government proposed ad hoc, and the National Assembly promptly adopted an amnesty for prisoners. Attempts of several individuals to amend and object to the amnesty (by replacing it with community service, for example), were rejected without explanation. In the same way, the legislator did not even attempt to explain such an urgent amnesty. Emptying overcrowded prisons may be the most urgent task, but it does not have to be performed to resemble the process of emptying one’s bowels.

The Constitutional Court decided not to ban certain ultra-nationalist organizations, although it already banned other organizations in the past, having the same standpoints and the same method of work. Almost at the same time, the Court of Appeals decided to annul the verdict against a member of one of these organizations, because it failed to find evidence in the defendant’s computer that he wrote the incriminating leaflets? Everything else he did and publicly said did not carry more weight than the fact that he may simply not be talented.

We also bore witness to how decisive the police deal with children armed with schoolbags and their mothers, armed with shopping bags, and all this because the court ordered the eviction of a family which legally bought a problematic apartment and paid for it years ago. The police will pay as well, for unlawful arrests, although this would probably not be the case if the media were not present, armed with cameras.

Deputy Prime Minister, at his on initiative, on the stroke of midnight, while sitting in his favorite club, awarded a high position to a former soccer player, who was being tried for illegally accepting money. The President then pardoned him the very next day (the former soccer player, not the Deputy Prime Minister), which is his constitutional right. The accompanying duty of publicly explaining the pardon – he chose not to fulfill.

After surviving all this in just one week, and being the living witnesses to how law and justice can be stretched and dragged until close to exploding, the explosion finally came – from the Hague. There, same as in Serbia, certain people decided that, due to political pressure and for political reasons (but of their countries, not our own) it is ok to separate, twist, abuse and neglect justice and law. In the words of the Deputy Prime Minister, we were completely shocked. But only when the Appeals Chamber, with a 3 against 2 vote, overturned the first-instance (long) prison sentence for Croatian generals – only then was the decision recognized as scandalous. Because it concerns us and can have influence on us. As opposed to our local examples? Which do not concern us and have no influence on our state, our society, our future, on what our history will say, as we claim the case is with the Hague verdict?

Peščanik.net, 23.11.2012.