B92: This is the thirteenth day of the revolution and we are already trying to ascertain which direction it is leading us in. The Socialists are preparing for their congress on 25th October. What are we to do with those people among whom there are so many thieves, criminals and murderers? To draw a line between the past and the present and show Christian forgiveness?

There are some Polish Catholics who believe and repeated that God was primarily just and then merciful. What is the Serbian God like these days? Lost, confused, sleeping and waiting for us to ask him a question.

Those whom the Serbian citizens elected on September 24 and then carried to the Parliament on October 5 for the time being remain silent regarding whether and when those who are responsible for destroying so many lives will be punished. DOS may be able to persuade us to show mercy but they cannot deny us the right to justice. In today’s programme we will hear the views of journalist Petar Lukovic and Professor Zagorka Golubovic on the recent events in the country.

Lukovic: The fifth was wonderful, the fifth was fantastic. From the early morning it was fantastic. When I went out at around 9 o’clock, I saw people at their windows for the first time in four years, old women, and it was obvious that it was all over. I was taken over by a feeling of euphoria. Those events did not only surprise me and you and the regime and even the opposition, but also the people who participated that day since everything happened so quickly. Everyone was prepared for days of siege and conflict, but everything fell apart so quickly and easily and that was in fact a sign of how bad and ruined the regime actually was. Waking from all this on Saturday, because I worked all day Thursday and Friday and I didn’t sleep, I felt totally empty. I think that was my most depressing day this year, the feeling when a man who has been in prison for thirteen years is released after all that time and it is difficult for him to be happy. A feeling of total emptiness. Only then did I realise how many years had really gone by, what we had all experienced, what I had actually gone through and how I had survived. And then I started to ask myself how the fuck I had survived those 13 years. Then I returned to reality in the same way as I had throughout all these years. The most depressing and bitter feeling was caused by the number and speed of those who have changed from one side, the losing side, to the winning one. Of course I am not so naive as not to be aware that this has always happened throughout history. After the Second World War, my friends tried to console me with this fact, you couldn’t find a single Frenchman who had co-operated with the Germans. The same thing happened in all eastern block countries. It happened in Croatia in such quantities that I found it totally unbelievable. But I think that what is original about what happened in Serbia is the speed at which it all took place, this is like nowhere else. It is impossible for changes, TV Politika is one example of this, to take place in 10 minutes, with the same people. Let’s not forget about the news which used to last 8,9,10 hours, after which all you could do was take a kitchen knife, go out into the streets and stab the first person you met. I’m talking about the fact that the opportunity should have been used in these past 14 days, I don’t mean revolutionary enthusiasm, but simply to use the chance to file criminal charges against those people. All types of proof exist, video footage etc. There is some sort of false tolerance here, these calls against revengism and at the same time we have all these company crisis headquarters. There is a sort of disagreement within this revolutionary idea. Are we in favour of this Leninist theft when we are at the same time anti-Communist, at the same time calling for tolerance and urging people not to seek revenge? There is a sort of chaos, of madness in this new government. I watched, for example, the reaction to the incident during the recent Red Star – Partizan match. Some football player appeared saying he was the DOS member in charge of football. Who on earth are you? Who put you in charge of football? Imagine, he is in charge of football on behalf of DOS and he’s talking about how politics should be kept out of football. There are many things which not only have not been thought about in advance, but which have been left to anarchy... and all that not only serves as a warning to me but also throws me into a type of dilemma, a minor depression because I do not see any real changes, and sorry, it’s already been 14 days. I do not agree with those who say that it’s only been 14 days. Sorry, but if you managed to dismiss the head of the Federal Customs, why didn’t you also get rid of the Federal Minister of Justice and others like him. I would not like this system and this society to behave the same way as Milosevic did. I do not demand revenge but I do demand that the courts begin investigations and for those people to stand trial, and that is the greatest problem here. Milosevic is not longer the president of Yugoslavia but I have deliberately not said that he is no longer in power. Milosevic is still here, alive and well, he’s doing something and he still has his party. In 14 days we have heard nothing about any case being prepared against him, about whether he is guilty, about whether he will be extradited. I must remind you, we are talking about a war criminal here. We are not talking about someone who should stand trial for electoral fraud, we are talking about a war criminal. I’m not saying that I was expecting sensational results but I was at least expecting the promise of changes.

There is an enormous gap between what was promised and what we expected on 4th and 5th and what is happening now. If I had said then that Milosevic would remain free and hold his party congress, I would have been hanged in front of the Parliament. And now that is normal, he has his party, they will have their congress, they are demanding to participate in the Federal Government and hold negotiations in front of the cameras and Vuk Draskovic appears on behalf of the opposition, and Gorica Gajevic and all the rest of them smile and they expect me when I see all this to say, "Lukovic, why the fuck aren’t you happy?". Well how the fuck can I be happy? It is all a brothel which is difficult to explain. I want two things, let me make myself clear here. Either it should be totally radical, which means clearing up this septic, revolting, sick, nationalistic, criminal body and do everything, regardless of how painful it may be, work on that from the very first day or tell ourselves, "listen we brought Milosevic down but we don’t want or need anything more, now we will carry on living together". They should have told us this, I should have been told this. Then I will sit in a cafe with Goran Matic, Aleksandar Vucic and Mira Markovic, we’ll all sit together and drink coffee and then I will know that they are not criminals. I would never have believed that after all these years of covering us in feces, Ivan Markovic and Goran Matic will now be able to walk the streets peacefully. It looks like they will. This is what I’m talking about. This is no longer Lukovic’s extremism, this is simply feeling that I have been betrayed or maybe I haven’t. Maybe I’m a fool. I know many people who work in television and I know how those who still work there worked before. I know people who worked for the police who have now been promoted. Can you imagine, I’m now talking about things people are probably not aware of, that the husband of Yugoslav Left senior official Zorica Brunclik, who is incidentally the director of the state television recording company, after everything was over on 6th October, called all the employees in for a whisky and said, "freedom has arrived". Can you believe that Zorica Brunclik stated somewhere that in the last several years artists had suffered the greatest repression. I am giving completely ephemeral examples, but the folk singer Era Ojdonic also said that he was the greatest victim of the regime in the past ten years. He, who was never off the television and who went to those bridges, jumping into the crowds shouting Slobodan Milosevic’s name. Then, fuck it, what’s the difference between this kind of shit throwing today, if you’ll pardon the expression, and the shit throwing we had previously? Maybe I’m cynical, but at least then I knew who my enemies were. I knew clearly and specifically who my enemies were, not ideological, but real enemies.

Have you noticed what the studio in Kosutnjak where they interview guests actually looks like? There are two low blue armchairs. Those are I guess ornamental chairs, used for flowers, they are definitely not for sitting on and then the camera is an entire meter above the level of the guests. They look like dwarfs. Then there is a small table and they all bend over and look ridiculous. They look totally demented, all of them, the studio, the presenters and the guests. I have seen Panic 6 times, then Dinkic, I suggested they open their own television station. I suppose it would easier, you could see them all in one place. They could present and be guests at the same time, that would be easier for me. The interview between Aleksandar Mandic and Kostunica was absurdly comical. I mean Mandic’s delight and excitement over Kostunica at one moment transformed into a totally crazy situation in which it seemed that Mandic was ready to get on his knees and orally satisfy Kostunica in front of the television audience. And it looked to me as though Mr. Kostunica wouldn’t have had anything against it if he had. It was tasteless. I have to say that Milosevic never allowed such a thing to happen, not even when he was interviewed by former RTS director Vucelic.

It seems to me that time is passing and there has been no shake up. You know it’s no longer Momir, but Predrag. We really fucking achieved a lot on October 5, we should congratulate ourselves.

I read today that Mr. Kostunica intends to go to Trebinje to attend Ducic’s burial. To go to the country called Bosnia Hercegovina and before that not even recognise that country and not have any diplomatic relations with her, looks to me like the continuation of the politics Mr. Kostunica has carried out all these years and that is why there is no great love between myself and politics. Going to Trebinje and Banja Luka, apparently we are talking about the Republic of Srpska, but in fact that is Bosnia and Hercegovina. I’ve been asking for years and nobody has been able to explain to me why our television gives the weather forecast for the Republic of Srpska every night. Why should I give a damn what the weather’s like there? Why don’t we give forecasts of the weather in Hungary or Rumania? Serbs also live there. What is this? Pathology? Do we still consider that to be Serbian land? Are we still united? When Albanians from Kosovo did the same thing, we rebelled. They have taken away Kosovo through meteorology. And we have been doing the same for eight years, every night I am informed as to whether it is raining in the Serbian part of Sarajevo or snowing in Banja Luka. I don’t give a fuck about that. This country hasn’t given up meteorology as a political means under Kostunica either, they’ve just adapted the maps so now we can see the relief maps with the mountains where it is snowing and raining. Why? Why can’t we just say that it is Bosnia and Hercegovina and be done with it? Like it or not, I’m not interested in that. They are a state, a member of the United Nations. Are we a member of the United Nations? Oh he’s so nice, he’s really great, we couldn’t have made a better choice, who would you rather have instead of him, Lukovic? This pathological need for someone to rule over us. People look on any critic of the president or the authorities as someone who is never satisfied. Of course I’m not satisfied. As long as that meteorological map still appears on television, I will remain unsatisfied. In the same way that I won’t find any peace as long as Milosevic is still around, as long as Pavkovic is still around. Doesn’t anyone remember what Pavkovic did? Is it possible that there is such a collective amnesia in Serbia? Is it possible for people to forget so quickly? One day they will say that nothing really happened on 5th October, just a minor coup.

Red Star supporters are now part of the state apparatus. You know, I am a Red Star supporter, but this is really ridiculous. They beat up the Partizan coach and daily Politica wrote the following day today that the Partizan supporters were to blame. Until yesterday the director general of Politika, Dragan Hadzi Antic and Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Marjanovic were the directors of Partizan and the club was heaped with praise. Today nobody can say anything against the Red Star supporters because they participated, they played a crucial rule in the attack on the state television premises. We already have some veterans after only 14 days. If you were more than 100 meters away from the Parliament, you are fucked. I read a few days ago that the dredge which entered the state television premises should be placed in the Ethnological Museum, in the National Museum as an exhibit. This glorification of the dredge. I also read that October 5 should be made a public holiday and named "Freedom Day". We had the same sort of nonsense at the beginning of Milosevic’s era at the great meeting in Usce on March 1, 1989. A great number of those people were also there then. They are now hiding their photos of Milosevic in the loft just in case they might need them again one day. We have the worst kind of stew here, there’s everything in it, bones, meat, vegetables, sugar and everything has been mixed together. I keep saying, and I think people are fed of hearing me say, that Serbia should deal with her past. The past should be analysed, they should learn from it and find out who is guilty and close this horrible chapter. Serbia cannot go forward into the future with the burden of the past which Milosevic and his madmen left us, Mladic, Karadic and all those madmen indicted for war crimes. The world has not forgotten overnight what was done in the name of Serbia. I heard Marko Jankovic saying last night that we should exclude the west for now, which the viewers will understand as – who gives a fuck about them, when we take their money, we will continue in our own way and we’ll still have our meteorological map. That will be difficult to change and I’m afraid that we will need many, many years to face some crucial issues. What is in fact the essence of that regime? It is no longer even criminal, but simply the need for crime. Everything in the name of the regime. What would have happened if, for example, on that Monday Milosevic had admitted his defeat. I bet that 70% of the people on the streets would have said, "so Milosevic is just, good on him. Who has the right to judge him when he has admitted everything". They would have forgiven him for everything overnight. That need to relieve someone of his or her guilt is terrible here. I am afraid now even to mention Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Vukovar, Dubrovnik, madness, sanctions and all those lunatics. Someone is bound to immediately tell me – hey Lukovic, you always bring something up, you always remember something. I am the idiot now. Not all those ambassadors who remain in their villas around the world now giving their support to Kostunica, as if they always... Aleksandar Prlja, Djoko Stoicic, behaving as though they always loved Kostunica, they always loved DOS, they were always against Milosevic. I need an indication at least, if Kostunica said that within the next seven months all ambassadors would be changed, so at to monitor their recent activities. But no, our ambassadors are still carrying out their patriotic duties etc. Well, fuck off, then.

I am afraid that in the two months before the Serbian parliamentary elections things will get so bad that it won’t matter who is in power. The mere fact that at one moment Darko Ribnikar was proposed as director of Politika, honestly I felt like vomiting, I mean I felt physically sick. I can quote a hundred articles that man wrote. The stupid readers of Politika really believed that America had gone to hell, that there was mass unemployment there, that blacks were being killed, Mexicans killed and after all that someone dares... to suggest that he become director of Politika. Don’t they have any shame? On the other hand there is Yu Info, established by Momir Bulatovic’s Federal Government. The transmitters for that television station have been placed in positions which are under the protection of the Yugoslav Army. The station’s employees are people from the Montenegrin Socialist People’s Party. That station experienced such a transformation within the space of five minutes, but not a complete one, that’s what’s annoying. The station has submitted to DOS at the same time remaining faithful to the Montenegrin Socialist People’s Party. We have an absolutely unbelievable television hybrid and it was through that station that Milosevic made his address to the nation and let’s not forget that every night that station broadcasts information from Yugoslavia’s senior officials. Nobody has moved from that station. You can still see the presenters who look like those from 1948, wearing the same shiny suits. It’s awful. As long as Yu Info and TV Palma exist, regardless of whether they are private, that doesn’t interest me. Have we forgotten what the owner of Palma did last year? He makes my flesh crawl. That man still makes programmes and invites DOS leaders on the air announcing them as "our dear guest". Disgusting! TV Pink, the direct broadcaster of the Yugoslav Left... which enabled its owner to become one of the media emperors in this country. Have you seen his villa in Dedinje? Do you know what the latest two RTS music programmes were? The 1,866th showing of the Galija concert on the first channel and Tony Montana on the second. I’m telling you that we will soon see Galija and Tony Montana on television again because they will say, so what we are tolerant, them Maja Nikolic will also be broadcast, why not, the woman’s got nice breasts and behaves well, and the fact that she was a member of the Serbian Socialist Party is nothing horrible. What do you want now Lukovic, you are seeking revenge, you’d hang them all. Well that’s not too far from the truth. This has become like Monty Python. If what it was like before was just a precursor of Monty Python, now we have the real thing. Finally, I have to tell you that on October 5 I had a horrible mental attack in my head and I thought, "Lukovic you have lost your job. What are you going to write about now? This will become a normal organised country. Look at how beautiful and healthy the people are, they are all smiling and listening to rock and roll, everything is great". On Saturday morning I told myself, "Lukovic, you will have more work than ever before". It is good for my work but bad for the country.

B92: In the first part of today’s programme you heard journalist Petar Lukovic whose articles you have been unable to read in our domestic press for years now. He was unpopular among editors especially after the introduction of the Public Information Act. The act has been revoked, but Lukovic has not been so fortunate. Now you are going to hear Belgrade University Professor Zagorka Golubovic who has been prevented from doing her job for almost a quarter of a century. This is what she told B92.

Golubovic: What started on October 5, and is usually referred to as the revolution, is just the beginning, but at the same time I believe that what needed to be done was done on 5th, not enough, but enough for an introduction to democratic changes, i.e. the replacement of Milosevic. It seems to me that we cannot return to where we were before that day, but we may still encounter great problems and difficulties in overcoming those forces who were defeated with Milosevic’s fall, but who have not been totally defeated, not entirely stripped of their power. That can be seen in their current behaviour. While they bent their heads during the first days, which was clear at the first session of the Federal Parliament, they have lifted their heads again slightly, they are imposing conditions, conditioning their entry into the Federal Parliament... The way DOS will behave, to what extent they behave as though they had legitimately come to power on crucial points will be the deciding factor in how quickly democratisation will be achieved and how we will overcome these difficulties which the remaining members of the regime will certainly create. One of the problems which I consider to be serious, and I ask myself why DOS is hesitating about this issue, is the status of Slobodan Milosevic. He is still sitting in his residence, he uses the same shelters and places he used while he was the Yugoslav president as though they were his own personal property and he still has an armed guard to protect him. Why is this being tolerated? I agree that he shouldn’t be sent to The Hague, but please allow me this, he shouldn’t be allowed to pull strings. The fact that he has been pulling strings over the past few days is obvious since as soon as DOS reaches any sort of agreement with the Serbian Socialist Party, they go to see Milosevic the following day, he says no and they break the agreement. I think that policy is very wrong. I do differentiate between revengism and calling for all those who have brought this country to its current state to be held responsible and in an economic sense they have reduced it to poverty, and in a political sense to catastrophe. Thus, I think we should not delay these matters and legal proceedings should be started if there are grounds for prosecution. To take such measures before all the relevant documentation is destroyed. The fact that they systematically destroy documentation was proved by the example of the director of Beogradska Banka Borka Vucic and other directors who have persistently remained in their offices in recent days. Why have they remained there? Certainly not to ease their consciences, but to destroy documentation which could be used as evidence in trials against them. This sort of indulgence should not be tolerated. You know, if we talk about revolution, then we should also talk about some sort of decisiveness so that what began on 5th is continued in a very determined and consistent way.

The entire structure has unfortunately remained in place. We will be really lucky if the Serbian Socialist Party really separates into two wings resulting in the moderates overthrowing Milosevic. We can still see the party’s general secretary Gorica Gajevic who was recently removed from office, negotiating with DOS regarding the transitional government, nothing has changed. I understand the concept of wishing to carry out change according to the law, but in a country which was until recently governed by the Mafia, in which theft was the main trait of the ruling authorities, everything cannot be done by legal means. You have to put your foot down and say sorry, this is not acceptable. I would also like to add that it seems to me that the reaction to allegations made by the former authorities is not nearly adequate. The former authorities describe what is currently taking place in our factories, companies and universities as illegal, chaotic and revolutionary, thus contravening all legal foundations. Please, who are they to talk? Those who broke all the laws in this country. Those who prevented this country from being a legal state. And we react, DOS reacts to this in a very lukewarm manner. They even agree with these allegations saying, "yes this is chaotic, but in this situation we need this or that". It should be said loud and clearly, "all those who are guilty of misconduct in the work place, for which there is documentary proof that they belonged to the Mafia and brought their companies to ruin, the workers have the right to replace and set up temporary managing boards". In my opinion, they have done the right thing in setting up these temporary boards. They have set up temporary managing boards waiting for them to be legally elected and for those who must not be allowed to remain in such positions to be replaced. The explanation DOS leader Nebojsa Covic gave in a recent television interview was totally inadequate. He even admitted that this was a matter of chaos. He was not able to say what was what. Of course, in such a situation there will be cases of abuse, of course some innocent people may suffer. But you know... or when we say – what took place on October 5 was complete chaos, destruction of property, fires, etc. Please, has any mass rebellion ever ended without human victims and bloodshed? This happened for the first time on October 5. Sadly, two lives were lost, one of them due to her own negligence, those are victims, we should feel sadness about that, but this is minimal when you consider what could have happened with one million participants in the demonstrations in Belgrade that day, the people behaved with dignity. Even when they were forced to stampede, when we were forced to stampede, my eyes were watering because of the tear gas, we behaved with dignity, we didn’t attack the police. Of course that is partly due to the fact that the police were co-operative and realised that they could not go against so many people. So this sort of explanations is totally inadequate. G17 member Mr. Labus gave the most adequate explanation when he said, "some sort of self-management has to be implemented in some companies, who is more competent than the employees in an organisation to say, this director is a thief and we don’t want him here any longer". That was a completely clear reply. However, some replies have been so vague and they encourage those who still accuse us of illegal acts and those are the people who have the least right to talk about legality.

I felt really happy on October 5 when I saw what was happening, and I have been working not only in the past few months, but really working towards the democratisation of country, from my earliest days, in my youth and I put up with the sanctions both then and now. When they called me from Politika a few days ago to interview me and to ask me what had happened, I said, "well you can see what has happened. You haven’t contacted me for 15 years and now you want to interview me. Something has happened after all". I have had no access to the state media for decades, however, on October 5 everything became so much brighter because I saw that the effort had not been in vain, because I saw what I have always asserted to be true - our nation is not a bad one, our nation is unfortunately not well enough educated, we were bombarded with bad propaganda, we did not have the chance to verify that propaganda and we were consequently lead astray. But when the nation is approached in the right way, when you give the nation the best of yourself, when our eyes were opened, then the nation began to think, our nation is a very intelligent one, our nation is brave, it only needs to be approached in the right way. This time intelligence played a major role because it was not closed up in its own circles. 1996, 1997 did not succeed because only the educated and middle classes participated. Now when the workers and the farmers joined in the rebellion, they told me in Sremska Mitorvica that not a single village there will have anything to do with Milosevic any more, so, when the workers and farmers, the largest part of the population began to rebel, then we had cause for hope.

Mr. Kostunica is now facing the greatest difficulties and problems because so much is expected of him. Above all, this flood from Europe, we have been a totally isolated country until now, an "outcast", nobody came knocking on our door and now suddenly everyone want to come here, everyone. He has to receive all those people, he has to talk to all of them and it is entirely normal that he should play that role. It is my view that he has not succeeded in thinking about numerous issues and perhaps he should, in the current circumstances, pay more attention to internal matters, but he has been bombarded by these external factors to such an extent that he just has not been able to mange that. I watched him last night, he is exhausted, his eyes are swollen. It is not so easy. I have to tell you that Mr. Kostunica has been President of the Serbian Democratic Party for many years, President Kostunica is a member of our Institute and he sent a message to our collegium a few days ago to say that he would remain a member and participate in our work. He has not been as exposed to politics as some of the others have, as say Draskovic, Djindjic and the rest and he needs some time to learn some things. I don’t think that he is insecure, I don’t think that’s why he is delaying some things, but everything that has happened since October 5 has simply overwhelmed him. That is too short a time for such radical changes. I hope that he will remain firm and not permit those who would like to scrabble around in the dirt avoiding correct legal means in the belief that they may return to power. You can see that they have resumed their dirty campaigns in order to achieve victory in the Serbian parliamentary elections, it is absolutely absurd.