Yugoslavia's happy counter-revolution

Editor's note: Reporter Aleksandar Pavic has been in Belgrade
covering Yugoslavia's historic election and its dramatic aftermath for
WorldNetDaily.com.

By Aleksandar Pavic

© 2000, WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.

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BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- "Revolution" is the word being used with
increasing frequency here to describe the events now taking place in
Serbia, the recent elections serving as the spark that ignited the
pent-up energy of a nation imprisoned from without and within.

Zoran Djindjic, one of the leaders of the DOS coalition that won the
elections, simply echoed yesterday what many of his colleagues think,
when he expressed surprise at how easily everything was going. And that
is the key description: "going."

The victorious opposition is not leading the events -- it is simply
going along, riding the spirit of the time. Its leading figures are
simply the embodiments of a process. After the mass had broken through
the police line in front of the Federal Parliament on Thursday, Oct. 5,
Milan St. Protic, one of the DOS leaders and the newly elected Mayor of
Belgrade was asked by a friend, "What do we do now?"

"I don't know," answered St. Protic. "We didn't plan on this
happening in the first place."

But what the DOS leadership quickly learned was simply to go with the
flow and keep the initiative, for everything else seems to be coming to
its place almost by itself. This is not the time for leadership, they
discovered -- just for wise management of a tremendous energy let loose.

The latest development yesterday was a preliminary agreement
reached between all of Serbia's relevant political parties to hold early
elections for the Republic of Serbia parliament, probably on Dec. 17. In
the meantime, the Serbian government is supposed to be reconstructed to
"reflect the new political reality." And that reality is that the old
regime is being swept away with an almost elemental force.

Since its symbol, Slobodan Milosevic, lost the aura of invincibility
by losing the presidential elections despite his desperate efforts to
rig them, the entire structure of his regime is rapidly collapsing like
a house of cards.

The elections for the Serbian parliament are, in the practical sense,
more important than the federal parliament elections that just ended,
since that body controls the police forces as well as the state-owned
firms and banks. So while victory at the federal level was the most
important for the opposition in the symbolic sense, winning control of
the republic parliament will ensure the practical results of that
victory.

The revolutionary air has entered all pores of life. The change that
started in the political institutions has spread to the work place and
the classroom as well. One by one, temporary "crisis headquarters" are
taking over state-owned firms from directors and boards appointed by the
previous regime. University deans are being replaced one by one; high
and elementary school principals as well.

And while there is some loose coordination with the newly installed
political parties, much of the action is spontaneous, with decisions
made on the spot. These are the days of redemption for all those who
have been dismissed from their jobs for political reasons during the
past several years.

Revolution is also marching through the streets, its harbingers being
the columns of students. They at one moment appear before the Serbian
parliament building to make their presence known to any of the
representatives of the regime who might get the idea to obstruct the
march of events, the next moment move toward the Milosevic residence on
Dedinje Hill just to see if he is there, and then turn back and march
past the newly freed state television building to greet the new staff.
The police are present in small numbers, occasionally stopping or
redirecting them, but never attempting to cause a conflict of any sort.
It is more of a collegial feeling, in which the roles have been divided,
but the plot is one and the same.

And what of the former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic? The
latest, although unconfirmed information, is that he has been in Russia
since last Friday, when he publicly admitted defeat. What is definitely
true is that his son, Marko, left for Moscow on Saturday along with his
wife and son, under a false name, and that he continued on to Beijing on
Monday, but was held up upon arrival and turned back to Moscow. Whatever
their next steps, an unhappy destiny awaits them.

Are the Milosevic family victims of a revolution? Perhaps it is more
appropriate to call it a counter-revolution. Because, while the Berlin
Wall was crumbling and the Iron Curtain falling in Eastern Europe in the
late 1980s, Milosevic chose to play the role of keeper of the
revolutionary flame from 1944, the year Red Army tanks drove into Serbia
and imposed the communist regime that shot, arrested or drove into exile
hundreds of thousands of Serbs. And while the Revolution ran out of fuel
in the rest of Europe, Milosevic found new sustenance for it in the wars
that tore apart the former Yugoslavia.

The last such war took place on Kosovo last year, leading to the NATO
intervention. But there was no more fuel. It took another year for the
smoldering revolutionary cinders to burn out in Yugoslavia, before the
present counterrevolution came to extinguish them to the end. And
perhaps that is the secret of the spontaneity now: Things are not being
radically changed -- they are just being restored to their natural
order.

After his inauguration on Oct. 7, this WND reporter asked President
Kostunica whether members of the Karageorgevitch Royal Family, who were
stripped of their citizenship and property back in 1946, could now come
to Yugoslavia without a visa. His simple answer was, "Why not?" What
could be more natural than that?

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Previous stories:

Milosevic's reign teeters

Milosevic's reign to end?

Church leader congratulates Kostunica

Weathermen on strike in Yugoslavia

Victory tear gas

AleksandarPavic served as chief political adviser to the president of Republika Srpska, the Serb entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina and as an adviser to the late Prince Tomislav Karageorgevitch of Yugoslavia. Pavic is currently translating Prince Tomislav's memoirs into English.