LDP: Ready to cooperate with DS

Cedomir Jovanovic says that following the signing the SAA, his LDP and the Democratic Party (DS) should be able to work together. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is ready to cooperate with the DS, which leads the “For a European Serbia” list, if “the section of society that the DS and LDP address shows a readiness to change the country,” Jovanovic told daily Politika. LDP: Ready to cooperate with DS Jovanovic said that President and DS leader Boris Tadic was wrong and was misusing Kosovo when portraying the signing of the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) as a victory in defending the province, while Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica was using the SAA to further anti-European sentiment in Serbia. The LDP leader did not want to discuss his party’s conditions for a potential coalition with the DS because he did not want to behave like other parties who “at the beginning of the elections hand out mandates and ministerial positions, and then look for a majority to support them after the elections.” “I think that if the DS’s position on Kosovo is set as a priority in defining our coalition, then it is more natural for them to form a union with the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), with which it has minimal differences with regards to solving the Kosovo problem and relations towards Kosovo,” he explained. “We still have room to convince or bluff each other, if we interpret the DS’s stance in the campaign as an attempt to hold on to a part of their voters, and not their honest intention to continue to implement policies after May 11 that have virtually shoved this country into isolation and confrontation with the developed world, and policies that have so divided our society that we can no longer ignore it,” Jovanovic said. Asked whether he believed that the DS was ready to accept the LDP’s stance on Kosovo, the LDP leader replied that “we have to talk about Kosovo.” “I would never say that I was the person who had formulated the 100 percent correct answer on the Kosovo problem, but I think that the LDP’s orientation is honest, sincere and responsible, and we can head up that road together, not only with the DS, but with all the people in this country, talking and formulating an answer to that problem,” Jovanovic said. When it was put to him that according to the latest opinion polls, it would be hard to form a ruling coalition around the DS, the LDP and the minorities, without the help of the Socialists or the DSS, and asked if he could envisage cooperation with the former, Jovanovic replied that “there are no elementary prerequisites for any kind of partnership with the Socialists, since that party has completely opposite views to those that the LDP insists on.” As far as cooperation with the DSS was concerned, Jovanovic said that “everything is pretty much already clear there.” “Cooperation with the DSS was not possible on October 6, 2000, and eight years later the DSS is showing the same lack of readiness that was characteristic of the first phase of our cooperation which ended with a parting of ways, and there is no chance of any kind of agreement there,” the LDP leader underlined. (FoNet)

LDP: Ready to cooperate with DS

Jovanović said that President and DS leader Boris Tadić was wrong and was misusing Kosovo when portraying the signing of the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) as a victory in defending the province, while Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica was using the SAA to further anti-European sentiment in Serbia.

The LDP leader did not want to discuss his party’s conditions for a potential coalition with the DS because he did not want to behave like other parties who “at the beginning of the elections hand out mandates and ministerial positions, and then look for a majority to support them after the elections.”

“I think that if the DS’s position on Kosovo is set as a priority in defining our coalition, then it is more natural for them to form a union with the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), with which it has minimal differences with regards to solving the Kosovo problem and relations towards Kosovo,” he explained.

“We still have room to convince or bluff each other, if we interpret the DS’s stance in the campaign as an attempt to hold on to a part of their voters, and not their honest intention to continue to implement policies after May 11 that have virtually shoved this country into isolation and confrontation with the developed world, and policies that have so divided our society that we can no longer ignore it,” Jovanović said.

Asked whether he believed that the DS was ready to accept the LDP’s stance on Kosovo, the LDP leader replied that “we have to talk about Kosovo.”

“I would never say that I was the person who had formulated the 100 percent correct answer on the Kosovo problem, but I think that the LDP’s orientation is honest, sincere and responsible, and we can head up that road together, not only with the DS, but with all the people in this country, talking and formulating an answer to that problem,” Jovanović said.

When it was put to him that according to the latest opinion polls, it would be hard to form a ruling coalition around the DS, the LDP and the minorities, without the help of the Socialists or the DSS, and asked if he could envisage cooperation with the former, Jovanović replied that “there are no elementary prerequisites for any kind of partnership with the Socialists, since that party has completely opposite views to those that the LDP insists on.”

As far as cooperation with the DSS was concerned, Jovanović said that “everything is pretty much already clear there.”

“Cooperation with the DSS was not possible on October 6, 2000, and eight years later the DSS is showing the same lack of readiness that was characteristic of the first phase of our cooperation which ended with a parting of ways, and there is no chance of any kind of agreement there,” the LDP leader underlined.