B92: The sounds we will be listening to in the forthcoming electoral campaign will not be as exciting as those in the YUtopia jingle, which we will soon have to change. Nor will the importance of the elections bring such excitement since the outcome is more or less already known. As you are aware, 18 political parties have found shelter within the Democratic Opposition of Serbia coalition whose victory is guaranteed by the popular Yugoslav President. They are thus saved from the risk of being unable to fulfil the famous census of 5%, and we know that because of that, the majority of them would find it very difficult to become parliamentary parties. That is why we will not devote any time to them on today’s program and we will also miss out the Socialist Party of Serbia which, according to public opinion polls, cannot fail and collapse so soon. Our subjects today are those parties and leaders which we remember as former aces and which are now entering the forthcoming elections as political outsiders. In this Utopia you will hear what Ljubisa Ristic, Vuk Draskovic, Zoran Lilic, Borisav Jovic, Borivoje Borovic and Aleksandar Vulin have to say about that. You will also hear some others who claim to be included in the ranks of politicians and who lead parties whose names should be remembered. We will begin with the largest one, with the Serbian Renewal Movement. Vuk Draskovic is also one of those leaders who was supported by his party regardless of their defeat at the previous elections. This continued support is probably the reason why he has not given up and he claims that his party is ready for the Serbian parliamentary elections.

Draskovic: Our campaign began in 1990 and it has two aims. It had two aims. Firstly, to overthrow the tyrant Slobodan Milosevic and then to overthrow and get rid of everything which his regime and the 50 year long communist system have built founded on evil, crime, hatred, on lawlessness and the misfortune of millions of people. The first target was achieved with the greatest sacrifice suffered by the Serbian Renewal Movement and the second one lies ahead of us. As we can see, absolutely nothing has changed since October 5 and it looks as though there is no prospect of anything changing after the elections scheduled for December 23 without a strong Serbian Renewal Movement in the Serbian Parliament. We don’t have the money for an expensive campaign, no one in the world has ever given us a single penny, not even a piece of paper. Our power lies in our programme and our people. However, since October 5 we have not been given the opportunity to appear on the media because they are more closed to us now than ever before. However, in spite of this, I remain convinced that we will have a strong Serbian Renewal Movement in the Serbian Parliament and that thanks to the presence of a strong Serbian Renewal Movement, things will move radically and rapidly towards the achievement of our second aim. At the last federal elections in September, held in a referendum like atmosphere, you were either for or against Milosevic, we lent more than 600,000 of our votes to Mr. Kostunica, because our voters estimated that he had a greater chance of overthrowing Milosevic in the first round than our candidate did. I believe that those votes will now return to the Serbian Renewal Movement. Our party members are deeply disappointed by what has taken place since October 5. Whatever the division of power in the Serbian Parliament after the elections scheduled for December 23, a strong Serbian Renewal Movement is the only guarantee and the engine of change which will move towards achieving the aims which I have been talking about. Let’s not forget the popular proverb "goats graze differently when the wolf is watching".

B92: You will now hear Vuk Draskovic’s reply to the question as to how his party will overcome the problem of the 5% census since public opinion polls show that for now they have no chance of achieving that?

Draskovic: You told us that we have only 15 minutes programming. I’m not going to waste that time on nonsense. Let’s see what the aim of overthrowing Milosevic was. I suppose that no one’s life in Serbia after his fall is in danger either from the state or the Mafia. That no one’s life in Serbia is threatened by poverty and that everyone in Serbia can speak, travel and trade openly. Let’s take a look, point by point, at which of these aims which represent democratic changes, have in fact taken place since October 5. Point by point. I am in Serbia, but those who organised assassinations on myself and those who are behind the murders on the Ibarska highway, those who are behind the murder of journalist Slavko Curuvija, the abduction of Ivan Stambolic and tens and tens of other murders in Serbia are still free and not only are they free, but there are still in the same positions, protected like bears by the new authorities. I read an aphorism recently: God save the Serbs and our new President save Radomir Markovic. Those who are guilty of all these crimes are not being held responsible, no charges have been brought against them, nothing is happening. Those who stole and took billions of marks out of the country placing them in their private accounts are not being punished by the new authorities, the police are undisciplined, crime is on the increase, peoples’ lives are in more danger than before October 5. Mass professional murders are taking place, liquidations, only this time our Democratic Opposition of Serbia-media are keeping more or less quiet.

We now have a situation where we are approaching the forthcoming elections which are one of the least fair of all elections we have held since 1990 – 18 parties and coalitions which repeat every day that they will remain united until 23^rd. After 23^rd, they say, they will separate again, and they are demanding that the citizens vote for them. That is dishonest. That is the same as if, for example, a young man and woman announce that they are getting married on 23rd, and invite everybody to a big wedding and call on people to bring them as many presents as possible because there are going to need them on 24^th and 25^th when they have decided to get divorced. I think that this is dishonest and they should come out with party programmes. We have some parties which are for the autonomy of Vojvodina. We have, for example, parties which are for an independent Vojvodina. That is legitimate, democratic, as Kostunica said and I agree with him, but say that now and step out with a programme and say - I want an independent Vojvodina. Serbia extends from the Sava river to the town of Vranje and don’t fiddle now until your pockets are full of votes and after that say – these votes are for an independent Vojvodina. That is absolute nonsense. I think that, in fact, next year we will have a strong Serbian Renewal Movement in the Serbian Parliament and big Serbian Renewal Movement rallies around Serbia in order to prevent neo-communists from reviving communism in Serbia.

B92: The Yugoslav Left is also hoping for success in the forthcoming elections, albeit a more modest one. And they present themselves in such a way. Ljubisa Ristic claims that his party is poor and will consequently lead a modest campaign and the funding for this campaign will be collected strictly from Yugoslav Left party members. Our interview with Ljubisa Ristic took place in the Stara Secerana theatre of which he is the director. We all know how modest this building is. Like the Socialist Party of Serbia, the Yugoslav Left is satisfied with the breaking up of the coalition between the two of them. They are counting on larger support from the citizens because, as Ristic says, they have freed the party of those who did not fit in. He claims that the presence of the Yugoslav Left on the new political scene in Serbia bothers all political parties.

Ristic: The Yugoslav Left, because of its programmes and its policies cannot join this process. We bother everyone. The Yugoslav Left bothers the Democratic Opposition of Serbia because of our basic connection to the Yugoslavian programme, we bother all Montenegrin parties, regardless of their names and their position regarding secession, either verbal or real. Finally, we bother the Socialist Party of Serbia, which never had a special interest in Yugoslavia either. They were always connected to Serbia and its so-called authentic programme. That is the authentic programme dating from the beginning of the nineties. That programme was changed with the appearance of the Yugoslav Left and the subsequent strong pressure exerted on the Socialists to move towards the left. They are now making their comeback as a coalition of nationalists and people connected to the regime. I think that in fact all this is very good. One day, if we manage to defend our country and if the country survives, we may eventually see a realistic political picture on which all those parties take their place in the centre leaving a large uncovered empty space on the left, one which has a tradition in our nation and our history and which, because of the circumstances, the Yugoslav Left will have to cover by itself. That is why the Yugoslav Left is currently under media lynch and pressure from all sides. That is why you will read all kinds of slur and nonsense about the Yugoslav Left and its members in the papers. You will not read anything about the members of other parties, less and less about the members of the Socialist Party of Serbia and with all the calming down after the shake up which took place on October 5 you’ll see that the main worry was how to disable the Yugoslav Left and prevent our party’s survival. That is over and the Yugoslav Left has survived. The Yugoslav Left will be even stronger than it was, because we will get rid of those who in fact don’t belong. In addition to that there was also the worry that the Yugoslav Left would take part in the forthcoming elections, and that worry too has gone, the Yugoslav Left will take part in the elections because we have enough supporters and members to ensure an adequate number of signatures for the lists. You must have heard those excellent proposals that the Yugoslav Left should be banned. Of course they wouldn’t be so stupid as to do that, so we will have four, five parties which will try to enter the Serbian Parliament. They won’t participate in the government. They will be the opposition, the left wing opposition and it is essential that an authentic modern left determination find its place on our political scene in the very complicated world processes in which our country is currently involved.

The Yugoslav Left is a modest, poor party, just as it always was. The fact that it was always presented as an extremely powerful, financially strong organisation was nonsense. That was never true. The Yugoslav Left has no properties, no funding. The Yugoslav Left will probably organise its pre electoral campaign out of its member donations and its modest financial resources at all elections in the future, and in time will try to insure its financial survival surrounded by rich and powerful parties financed both from abroad and inside our country. The Yugoslav Left can count on all of that and that will probably work to its future advantage. Slobodan Milosevic is a man of intelligence with the competence of a statesman. Mira Markovic is a politician. Those are things, which only look similar at first glance. Time will show that the mistakes Slobodan Milosevic made regarding our country and its position were of a political nature. All his successful moves were state ones, and vice versa. Mira does not know a great deal about the state and is not very interested in it either. She is someone with a very refined political nerve. She is a sociologist by education and is above all interested in society, and I think that the difference between those two parties, which have been until now united on the left, is basically in that. The Socialist Party of Serbia is interested in state, power and the historical position of the national state. The Yugoslav Left did in fact originate as a movement devoted to civil change, to society itself and if it had not been for the large number of people in the Yugoslav Left interested in power, the party would now resemble a civil movement more than a political party and I believe is that where the real future of the party lies.

B92: Since October 5 many people have changed their tunes. Ljubisa Ristic has this to say about Slobodan Milosevic these days.

Ristic: He was the president of the country. He, of course, takes responsibility for the entire functioning of the state. That is his mandate, his job. In this particular political situation he made some major errors during the last few months. Very grave errors. He accepted the scheduling of extraordinary presidential elections without any reason, following the stupid or ill intentioned advice of some of his advisers, and secondly he had unlimited trust in the state apparatus who did not deserve this trust and signs of this were evident a long time ago. I think that his historical merit is considerable because he avoided making a third mistake. He didn’t order intervention which would have lead to clashes thus resulting in bloodshed. That is one of his serious historical merits, which will probably be given appropriate appreciation in the future. One of his serious political mistakes was the fact that our political elite, both in the opposition and in the regime was not replaced or changed at all over the last years. We had a very bad average on both sides, as regards both the political leadership in power and that in opposition. That was a dead end street, in which negative selection, in which too many selfish people, people without any realistic view of the world exerted too much influence on too many important things in the lives of our citizens. That situation couldn’t be maintained and that was either his mistake or his diminishing capability to exert any influence on the situation.

Milosevic handed over the power to Kostunica, to tell you the truth – I don’t know if someone advised him to do so, but I think he did that without any reason. The election results provided no basis for him to do that. We should have held a normal second round, one in which Kostunica might have won, he probably would have had won, but that wasn’t the case. Claims were made for two months prior to the elections that there would be electoral fraud. The elections took place – there was no fraud. There were no violations. A nonsensical, idiotic situation was created through the stupidity of the announcements made by the electoral commission and the Constitutional Court, nobody did anything to calm the situation down. On the contrary, they all added fuel to the fire because that was what was required – they needed to create an atmosphere in which a military operation would be carried out. That military operation – there were groups of armed people who came from different directions. Some came from Bosnia, some from SFOR bases, some from Yugoslavian provinces, they all came in front of the Federal Parliament. Behind them was the mass of citizens who didn’t participate in that. Those people, a couple of thousand of them with Motorola’s, heavy weapons and Molotov cocktails had the sole aim of humiliating the country, burning down the parliament, burning down the state TV premises and causing bloodshed. Of course they couldn’t have done anything if they hadn’t had the support of the police.

B92: We still haven’t had the opportunity to hear what the Milosevic-Markovic couple were doing during the night between October 5 and 6 and what the atmosphere in their house was like. Ljubisa Ristic spent that night with them.

Ristic: It is quite normal for people to be where there were before, in their homes doing their jobs. There is no doubt that everything was just a lie fabricated to suit the purpose of what was supposed to happen that night. Of course, I’ve seen them innumerable times, that night, before that night and after that night.

B92: How did they react that night?

Ristic: I don’t understand what you are asking me. How did they react? Everyone in this country was excited that night. Normally, they talked excitedly, warily, soberly, they reacted to the situation as it developed, evaluating what should they do, how they should behave, as we all would have done. Did you react differently that night? Of course your question stems from what you were saying before – that they are on a plane above the southern seas, that gold has been loaded... It is normal for you to ask this question, since that is what you thought and said before. What can I tell you now? I can’t help you to wash your brain again after it has already been washed once before.

Interviewee 1: Everybody wants to wash his or her hands of it.

Interviewee 2: I don’t think it will ever work, of course.

Interviewee 3: They have taken lots of money and now – let’s go over there to take some more. It is in their interests to take as much as possible.

Interviewee 4: Lilic was in the same position all the time, before Milosevic, wasn’t he? They should both be tried.

Interviewee 5: I can’t think anything because I’m a member of the Socialist Party of Serbia. I love the Socialist Party of Serbia. I love Milosevic.

Interviewee 6: The rats have all deserted the sinking ship.

Interviewee 7: To be honest, I’m not interested, because my wages are worthless. They have all changed but I haven’t noticed any difference yet.

Interviewee 8: Everybody should be held responsible for what he did or failed to do.

Interviewee 9: I don’t know, whoever is guilty should be held responsible.

Interviewee 10: They were content to be with them until yesterday and now there are running away. If they were stealing with them until yesterday, then they could now stand still and face the truth, not run away and join other parties. Do they think that they will do better there?

B92: Those were some common and very polite reactions to the flood of heroes who have changed to the victors’ side, they very recently changed sides and are now trying to convince us that there were on the same side all the time, without being aware of it, neither were we. The absolute champion in gaining media space is Milorad Vucelic who we have managed to avoid this time, but his party colleague Borisav Jovic is here with us. You will also hear from the unavoidable Zoran Lilic and Aleksandar Vulin who will fight for the left. The right will be presented today by Borivoje Borovic. What are their political ambitions and why are they in politics again?

Jovic: I certainly expect us to meet the census if we manage to collect 10, 000 signatures certified in court in order to verify our list. However, that problem is a very difficult one, which is, in my opinion, an unconstitutional regulation, one which limits both the active and passive electoral right of the citizens. This was carried out under a specific law which was passed in a rush at the last parliamentary session by those parties which lost at the previous elections, obviously with the aim of disabling new parties, which were bound to be established since they were falling apart, to prevent such parties from obtaining enough signatures authorized in court in such a short time and thus from participating in the elections. That was their hope, manipulation which would by illegal means exclude all newly established parties from participating in the elections. Whether or not they will succeed – we have yet to see.

Lilic: Lilic wants to do something he wasn’t able to do while he was a member of the Socialist Party of Serbia, and really, in the last days, or better said since the foundation of the Serbian Social Democratic Party of which I am the founder, that has been one of the most common questions. What is it that you can do now in comparison with the time when you were in a better position and you failed to do anything. And do you feel responsible for some of the times which are now behind you? There were many things which were feasible or which could have been implemented, either within the economy or within the sphere of foreign affairs. One of the basic reasons why I left the Socialist Party of Serbia was my dissatisfaction with the fact that nothing which could have been done was ever carried out because nobody wanted to do such things for various personal reasons, so I’ll try to implement that in some other way.

Vulin: I didn’t leave the Yugoslav Left, I was expelled from the party. So, at that famous session of the party’s central committee, which I attended despite not having been invited, I demanded the resignations of the entire leadership in order to see if we could return the Yugoslav Left into the sort of party it was at the beginning. Could it be an authentic left wing party? According to the reactions of the Yugoslav Left leadership it cannot. This is not possible and since it can’t be a party of the normal, real, authentically founded left then it follows that I can’t be a member of it since I can’t be engaged in politics in any other way. Straight after the war I talked about that terrible party rhetoric. I said then that I couldn’t ever use the word traitor in such a way. Who is a traitor, who can judge that someone is a traitor? In a political sense that is very negative and counter productive, not to mention being both unpleasant and rude in a civilisation sense. That party rhetoric bothered me as did the possibilities of using party membership for the accumulation of wealth and obtaining privileges, the things party membership should never be used for. That was, probably, the reason why I was expelled from the party and after that the dissatisfaction culminated and other party members who previously had not expressed their dissatisfaction began to do so. I’m talking mainly about young members and those not known to the public, those who didn’t have any party or state positions, who subsequently, in large numbers, decided to follow my example i.e. to follow what created that example and that is how the Party of the Democratic Left came to be.

Borovic: What is important about the People’s Party of Justice is that we began with one moral principle. Those who represented the democratic elite in Serbia in 1990 were never given the opportunity to accomplish what they wanted within the Serbian Renewal Movement because of managerial lobbies, groups of people who were making money out of politics. Anybody who joins the People’s Party of Justice will have to declare their property. None of them will make an enormous fortune through politics, which has been the case so far. I’m afraid that the new democratic authorities will resort to the same mechanisms at local level, because as we can hear when they publicly declare their property, most of them are politicians without property, with old cars, many of them do not own their own flats. So I expect an increase in taxes in order to finance all those people. Rich people should be involved in politics. At least, those who are relatively well off.

Jovic: If someone spends all his life following and influencing political events, he feels induced to do something if those events are not in the interests of the country. Thus, this relatively long tragic state of our country and the virtual lack of any human perspective force him to think that it could be better and that he should engage himself in some way. That is one circumstance. The other is the fact that the party, which I belonged to for a long time, has reached that state when it ether has to come to its senses and undergo a process of regeneration or it will start to disappears from the political scene all Zajedno. Our position is, on the one hand, perhaps rather specific because both the former governing party and the current governing coalition will both be against us. We know very well and we can identify and explain the mistakes which the former authorities made, which is, in the end, not so very difficult. On the other hand, we have considerable experience in leading the country, in political and state business, so we are capable of issuing serious warning and objections to the new authorities, thus constituting a serious opposition in order to prevent the new authorities from making mistakes similar to those made by the previous ones.

B92: Borisav Jovic also has a very original opinion about the flights from the Socialist Party of Serbia since October 6.

Jovic: The more people cross over from the Socialist Party of Serbia to us, excluding, of course, those who are the most responsible for what has happened to our country and the Socialist Party of Serbia itself, the better it is for us. That is why we don’t want to judge anyone, we don’t want to judge those who are currently leaving the Socialist Party of Serbia and are not coming to us, even if they are establishing their own parties, because we understand that people have to leave a sinking ship. If anyone had seen that earlier or when the boat had just capsized, then that would be a different matter. We don’t believe it would be of any use to discus that now because we don’t want to reject anyone who has rational ideas and who can help the setting up of our party, thus facilitating the establishment of a party which will be the modern social-democratic option which our society is in urgent need of.

B92: Jovic who recently, at the press presentation of his new party, said that he was still a member of the Socialist Party of Serbia is now saying that that applied only that day and no longer. And Zoran Lilic, I guess, has explained why he wasn’t so brave before with the statement that his life was in danger.

Lilic: I didn’t say that, that was an incorrect interpretation of my statement. I said that only abnormal people were not afraid and added that fear is a feeling just like hatred is a feeling, just like love and responsibility are also feelings. Thus, probably that feeling of responsibility all these years was for me a nuance above the feeling of fear. I think that first part of my announcement was interpreted as being that I said that I was afraid for my life. I wasn’t afraid all those years in much more difficult situations, and I don’t have any reason to be afraid now. I believe that this country will become a really legal country just as all political parties are now promising. Did I go with little risk because of all my actions or lack of action all these years? Probably both of those. The answer to that question will be provided by those who will analyse what we did all these years. I don’t want to talk about those whom I consider to have made major errors nor do I want to talk about myself, because that would be a subjective interpretation of what I think is right. I think I did well and I think I gave the maximum contribution and invested the greatest efforts in order to prevent certain events in this country, in order for things to be different. I have no intention of justifying myself nor of explaining whether or not I was right. Time is the best indicator and I think that will happen very soon.

B92: If they have failed to convince us of the purpose of their political existence, we then asked them whether the reason for their public appearance was to wash clean their biographies, we asked them about former leaders and also about their own personal mistakes.

Vulin: The only possible reason for my conscience to be bothering me is perhaps because I didn’t present my position more assertively while I was sill a member of the Yugoslav Left. I did that as often and as assertively as I could. Maybe now and from this perspective, I think I could have insisted more. In 1998 I honestly tried to do everything possible to keep the Yugoslav Left the same as we had planned it would be at the beginning. To be the party devoted to the widest social layers, to ethnic equality, the party that would fight for workers’ rights, things which are close to my heart. I’m sorry I failed to succeed in that because if I had succeeded, we were never have joined the coalition with the Radicals and we would never have become what the Yugoslav Left became later. I can only feel sorry for that.

Borovic: I’ve never kept quiet, I’ve always talked openly, I offered my resignation in 1992, and my resignation on party presidency membership, after the disintegration of the Zajedno coalition, was reported in all media, I said then that the Serbian Renewal Movement must not enter any kind of cooperation with the communists. That happened when the party joined Momir Bulatovic’s government, it happened during the negotiations about joining the Serbian government. The Serbian Renewal Movement Belgrade City Council had the full support of both the Socialist Party of Serbia and the Yugoslav Left and I openly criticised that, resulting in my resignation from presidency membership for almost three years. As regards those issues connected with finance and embezzlement at the local level, if I had known those details, I would never have made them public, because I am after all a lawyer. There are people and institutions whose role it is to deal with that. The Draskovic family did not become rich. I know his brothers and sisters. They are all modest and honest people and they are all of modest means. Within the Serbian Renewal Movement itself there is an informal team which manages the party and which was poor until they took over power at local city level. Afterwards they started grabbing what didn’t belong to them, what they were not entitled to either by law or by their positions in the party itself. Thus, a certain large family which doesn’t originate from this area had to fulfil their needs and Vuk Draskovic was only the exponent of that. He tried to explain to the people something he didn’t stand behind. The tragedy in all this is that he is aware of that and he definitely knows what this is all about, but he experienced what he did at the last elections because of the minor interests of a small number of people on the political scene

Lilic: President Milosevic is responsible for his own fate and he is responsible for everything which happened to him during the last several years as well as what will happen to him in the following months or years, personally, but not only Milosevic. Milosevic can be a metaphor for all of us who were around him. He can represent the fate of all of us, if you want me to use that term, and of course all of us should take responsibility for what we did or failed to do when we were in a position to do something, just like you just said, myself included. I have to take responsibility for that, and here I am ready to take responsibility, of course on the base of arguments, not on the basis of someone’s wishes. Of course, all of us should take responsibility for the political errors made in this country, for the high level of crime in this country and the total criminalisation of the country which I have talked about on many occasions. Finally, personal responsibility should be taken for the political and economic crimes. I think that no one should be excluded from this, certainly not Milosevic.

Ristic: We are delighted to have the opportunity to clear things up, but you see, nothing like that is happening. It’s all just talk. They have been talking about secret accounts abroad, about suspicious secret operations but nobody anywhere has as yet published any secret accounts. Why don’t they just open up those accounts, why don’t they say who those accounts belong to, give us the numbers of those accounts, and why don’t they show who stole and took the money abroad. I would personally be very happy to find out the names of those who did that and to return that money to the country. But why doesn’t that happen? What delicacy and what reserved behaviour is being shown by international factors and the powerful domestic opposition towards those criminals. Who are they protecting? They don’t have to protect anybody from the Yugoslav Left. The Yugoslav Left is the only party which calmly allowed its party deputy president to go to prison when it was proved that he was a criminal.

Vulin: Do I look like a criminal who become rich to you? Come on, try to find anything about me which is not in accordance with the law. That is impossible because I didn’t do anything like that. That is not simply a matter of circumstance, but my personal attitude. I will never become involved in any business deals within politics and I don’t believe that material wealth is a criterion on which to base human value and as far as moral responsibility is concerned, I’ve respected my personal morality very well and when I realized that something was not in accordance with what I believed to be honest and decent, I left politic. In the same way I am now returning to politics because I think that is honest, decent and responsible for me, along with those who believe in the same ideas, to try again to bring those ideas closer to this nation. I mean ideas, not people.

Ristic: Aleksandar Vulin is like a puppet on a string who is being used by those who have never thought well about the Yugoslav Left. Aleksandar Vulin is very marginal to the Yugoslav Left and he has no special significance to the party, particularly in view of the fact that everyone within the Yugoslav Left has and will always be aware of that. Aleksandar Vulin can do whatever he wants to, he can set up 15 parties with his political mentors Jovica Stanisic, Milorad Vucelic but that has nothing to do with the Yugoslav Left. Aleksandar Vulin was never the most important in that, the others also had their own aims. We suffered such attacks both from right wing parties and from the Socialist Party of Serbia. This is still going on, but that process is something that parties go through in times of civil crisis, that’s normal.

Lilic: I don’t have any need to wash my biography clean. Maybe some do have, some are adding to theirs and some are deleting things from their biographies. I really don’t want to delete anything from my biography. I want the continuity of facts and thoughts to remain the same as it was and I also want to try to change what I didn’t do. That is my right and nobody can take that from me. I have the right to attempt to change what I failed to do, maybe to change something I intimately feel responsible for not doing which should have been done. Unfortunately, some things will never change.

Jovic: I was in a senior position in the state. I represented firstly the interests of the Serbian nation, who placed me in that role and those of the Serbian State. I represented the constitution and laws which I swore to respect in front of Parliament, I represented the international law which our country adopted and I don’t think that I could have done any differently because in any other case I could have been condemned by my own nation. The fact that I was under the illusion, which I was, that we must win in the end because we were right, that is a different thing all Zajedno. It was shown that the strongest always win and not those who are in the right and in that respect of course there is some degree of responsibility.

Borovic: I have always had a flexible attitude towards politics. I was spokesperson for both the DEPOS and Zajedno coalitions and I was the head of the Zajedno parliamentary group in the Belgrade Municipal Assembly before the coalition fell apart and then I made the mistake which is well known to the public. Persuaded by members of the Serbian Renewal Movement and in my capacity as head of the Zajedno coalition in the assembly, I demanded the resignation of Belgrade mayor Zoran Djindjic. After that I was greeted in my own home when I woke up the next morning with my children marching around my bed whistling and chanting "Red bandit", expressing their position regarding the terrible deed I had done. I was rather misused then, I thought that the mere reading of that text was not important and that discussions would be held afterwards. Obviously there was an agreement between the Serbian Renewal Movement, the Radicals and others to adopt that proposal without any discussion, which really surprised me and after what happened in my own home with my own children, I went to the party headquarters and handed in my resignation as party deputy president. I knew they were absolutely right.

Draskovic: My biggest mistake in the last ten years was that I fought against Slobodan Milosevic along with the Serbian Renewal Movement so heroically and with such great sacrifice and that there aren’t any veterans in the Serbian Renewal Movement from October 7 this year. That was really a big mistake. And the biggest mistake made by the Serbian Renewal Movement in the city of Belgrade was that the city council, in really impossible conditions succeeded in carrying our certain things which were real accomplishments. All of Mira Markovic and her husband’s police-investigative apparatus was sent to find some criminal affair and of course, they failed to find anything because there wasn’t anything to find. Only rumours, Mica told Mara and Mara told ... Those were rumours. According to those rumours I was given a villa on Lake Geneva by the CIA in 1990 and shot myself in ear so that I could wear an earring. This scar I have on my temple is self-inflicted and according to one version, a beautiful woman was with me in my flat in Budva and it was she who fired the shot in my head. That was said in Belgrade. And you want me to comment on that? I will not! There is no discussion as to what we should do about Kosovo. I’m telling you that in this new government there are some people who I’m sure don’t know where Kosovo is. At a recent press conference, one of the police co-ministers in the Serbian transitional government, from the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, believing himself to be Kutuzov, opened a map, failing to consult with anyone else, failing even to consult with the other two co-ministers, started a speech with the words: "I went to Kosovo yesterday with President Kostunica, or to be more precise to Bujanovac". And then, he gave an ultimatum – until Monday evening... and then the transitional Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic, although he is the deputy prime minister I have referred to him as the prime minister since he truly governs this government, and I’m glad he is in charge and not the real prime minister Mr. Minic, even though they act in collusion, dissociates himself from somebody’s indecent, unsuitable and obstinate statement and doesn’t say whose statement he is referring to. And the people are from his government, from the Democratic Opposition of Serbia. What are we going to do with Kosovo? Are we going to parade every day and be photographed in the Presevo valley? Where is the plan for Kosovo? The Serbian Renewal Movement has such a plan. Because of all this a strong Serbian Renewal Movement is needed in the Serbian Parliament now more than ever before, and I’m sure that we will have that after the elections on December 23.

B92: Today is yet another day which has failed to go by without the presentation of a new coalition. This is what we were told at today’s presentation of this latest coalition, "The Party of Serbian Unity, the Party of Serbian Progress, the Farmers Party of Serbia and the United Pensioners Party have all reached agreement unbelievably quickly because they have been united by the Serbian national interest". Let’s now hear from Borislav Pelevic and Miodrag Vujovic.

Vujovic: What is important for the Party of Serbian Unity, the Party of Serbian Progress, the Farmers Party of Serbia and the United Pensioners Party is that our country is firstly liberated. We want to liberate Serbia, we want Kosovo and Metohija to become an integral part of Serbia and Yugoslavia as they always were, to keep the unity of Serbia and Montenegro, for Vojvodina to remain part of Serbia and Yugoslavia, and we want, one day when the conditions have been achieved, for the Republic of Srpska to become part of our Serbian country.

Pelevic: There is not a single reason why this country cannot be a country made up of the Serbian nation and national minorities. There is a difference between a civil state and a civil society. The existence of a national state does not exclude that of a civil society.

Vujovic: Our four parties will take part in these elections jointly under the name of the Party of Serbian Unity – Professor Borislav Pelevic. That name is going to be on our electoral list and the agreement between us clearly states that all parties will keep their individual identities before, during and after the elections. We hope that our four parties will achieve success at these elections and that we will become a parliamentary party. We will have no problems meeting the 5% census.

Pelevic: Serbs and patriots no longer have any excuse, whoever is a Serb and a patriot now has someone to vote for.

B92: Irritated by the flood of these and similar identities into politics our colleague Petar Lukovic has pointed his finger at the Democratic Opposition of Serbia.

Lukovic: The very idea that they appear in newspapers and on television is something that I could never have imagined would happen. Sorry, but I have to say it like this – if someone shat on your head for ten years and threw faeces over you every night, then when that came to an end you expected that there would be no more of those people around, and then simply here they are again, with us, and again saying that they didn’t do anything, that they were super – that doesn’t tell us anything more about them, this tells us something about those who are allowing them to do this. We are talking about a situation where a great whitewashing is being permitted. So, somebody is allowed to cleanse himself, to set up a new party, and never to be asked any questions ... Listen, I could now ask a hundred questions because I have hundreds of Lilic’s statements, I could ask him what was he doing, what he took part in, I could ask Vucelic why he was the greatest war-monger on television. We should talk about Vucelic as we would a war criminal. I apologise for talking about this. You have asked me to talk about him as the leader of a new party. I don’t give a fuck about him as a party leader, I’m talking about him as a war criminal. Do you understand? But it’s me who calls him that, not the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, not the authorities in this country, they permit him to live normally, to work normally, to have his own party, members, fax machine, secretary, telephones and everything else. What are we ultimately talking about here? Is this a change? Is this what we fought for? What is the difference between what we had before and what we have now? There is no difference. Not only is there no difference, but I would go so far as to say that there are indications, there are situations which make the events currently taking place more dangerous and even worse than those which took place two, three months ago. I’m not justifying Milosevic, not at all. On the contrary, Milosevic is alive and well, he will be put on trial for building a green house. Great. Excellent. Super. They will find out that he went through a red light once. That his bodyguard went through a red light. Great. He will be sentenced. Brilliant. Like nothing ever happened, everything is super, we are all happy, you are all in euphoria. Excellent enjoy yourselves and take part in the forthcoming elections, but this time without me.

My attitude towards the authorities, the state, parties, people, enemies and allies is the same as it was before September. There is no longer any difference. Whether it be the Yugoslav Left, the Socialist Party of Serbia or G17 is completely the same. I don’t believe there is any difference any more and whoever fails to understand that is a moron. He is a complete idiot. However, these forthcoming elections are being completely feigned, they are imbecilic elections. I’m definitely not going to vote, I’ve decided, I decided today, at two o’clock. I decided not to vote because such elections with such a choice are moronic to that extent that if I have already eaten shit once and voted for Kostunica, because I didn’t have anybody else to vote for, this time really... To eat shit twice in two months – I won’t do it. That is my right.

We refer to the problem in our nation as a genetic one, one which has lasted for a long time. To put it simply, nothing can be done here without a leader, without someone to lead us. I, personally, don’t need anyone to lead me. Nobody in my life has ever had to lead me, I don’t need anyone and that doesn’t interest me. But I live in a country in which 87 % of the population.... Listen, not even Fidel Castro, not even Enver Hoya had the support of 87% of the population, ever. Now we have to be proud because we all adore Kostunica? Because he is nice, he is cultured. So what, it is normal to be nice and cultured. He is not going to strip off at a press conference, is he? That is completely normal, why are we so delighted by it? The police are correct . Of course it’s normal for the police to behave correctly. The police shouldn’t kill us. Pavkovic didn’t kill us on October 5, and now we are all delighted about that. Super. He didn’t kill us all. Brilliant. Let’s give him an award.

I’m simply ashamed because those who brought us to this and led us to these crimes are still here as if nothing has happened, and on the other hand, the new authorities are letting them know that there are safe, secure, great, super. Mira Markovic will make a speech in parliament tomorrow, and fuck all of us. She will tell us that we are traitors, morons, fools and they will all applaud and say: "Super, that’s democracy". That is not democracy.