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Panel discussion
VOJVODINA OR A STORY ABOUT ELECTIONS

Panelists:
Teofil Pančić, journalist
Mirko Đorđević, publicist
Milenko Perović, philosopher
Alpar Lošonc, sociologist

Moderator Dinko Gruhonjić, IJAV’s president

Theater Dobrica Milutinović, Sremska Mitrovica
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008, at 07.00 p.m. (19.00h)

Dinko Gruhonjić: Good evening. Today’s panel discussion deals with currently more than actual topic – the election results and the post-election combinations. In the first place we are dealing with Vojvodina that, which is now obvious, voted clearly and had its say. As regards Republic nothing is clear there at all or it is, possibly, all clear but they hide it from us. Expecting now the second round of the provincial ballots I invite Prof. Milenko Perović to tell us his impressions – where we are coming from and where we are going to. Please, Mr. Perović!

Milenko Perović: It is not easy to answer this question especially in the situation in which we live, with this edgy uncertainty about big deals now made in order to form new government and the provincial government and the local governments in the great number of towns throughout Serbia.
Some two months ago, I think, we organized a similar panel in Kula, before elections, and there I predicted, I sort of anticipated, and I was really unhappy that this anticipation in a great measure proved true, when I answered a question how I would evaluate the outcome of approaching elections and said that I didn’t expect any epochal and fundamental change in the political constellation of Serbia, therefore neither in the constitution of government, It is simply because during one year that had passed from the previous parliamentary elections not one of those crucial factors that constitute the political scene and model the protagonists and the possible combinations of the future participants in power – none of these has changed! During one year there was no change either in those deep tycoon layers that from background run economy and in a good measure also the political constellation of society, in certain services that also run from background certain processes all these haven’t changed, and not only that there were no changes during one year but they actually haven’t changed for some fifty years. And then, neither the political representatives of certain political ideas on the political scene of Serbia changed. That’s why, in my opinion, we have got results we could have absolutely expected.
Of course, that very election evening and those several days after elections created a sort of impression, an illusion that democratic or pro-European forces have won the elections. However, I guess it is already clear to everyone, that elementary mathematical operation shows that essentially it is not so. It is evident that the Democratic Party (DS) has achieved a great success and has made a big move forward, actually that it has won the elections with its coalitions but not enough to, in the state of Serbia, finally strategically rule, not only in the sense that they can form a new government or to become a hub of new government but neither it is so in the technical sense, tactically, it cannot form a new government. And thus we are now in the most incredible historical situation that on one party, or one interest group, once the ruling power in the state of Serbia that had completely ruined it, now depends the course the state of Serbia would take.
Why so? In the historical sense such a situation is not unusual, because from this perspective, during these eight years, it has been evident in this or that way that the so-called great 2000 October 5th coup, actually, in its essence, wasn’t coup, because actually after October 5th a kind of symbiosis took place between the former ruling groups and new groups. I have recently read somewhere, I think it was in Danas daily, one dialogue between the late Đinđić and Žižek, it was in 1999, in time when Milošević was relatively in the height of power, and it was for, I think, Suddeutsche Zeitung, which Đinđić ended with an unbelievable anticipation that subsequently was, in my opinion, fully confirmed during these eight years – that the fall, the nominal fall of Milošević or the collapse of regime of the personal rule of Milošević might bring no any fundamental change to Serbia, meaning that a part of protagonists in Milošević’s regime may disappear from the historical stage but that the essential functioning of Milošević’s political organization may continue in a sort of an unbelievable symbiosis between the protagonists of Milošević’s regime and those others who then, in 1999, were its opposition.
This is what actually has been happening all these years and is happening today. Thus October 5th didn’t lead to any necessary changes in the state of Serbia to be qualified as a really historical overturn. As from historical stage in the state of Serbia, those political groups and those deep-rooted organizations that were behind these groups that had led Serbia in 2000 to a disastrous historical position, probably the most stressful historical situation ever in Serbia’s history are not being purged. And when such a radical overturn isn’t complete then it is not historically unexpected that the so-called old forces against which this coup had been effected survive in this or that way, wait for their time and re-establish themselves in this or that way as the crucial factors on the political scene. Actually this is what happened and we today, after these elections, have just such a situation in which attempts are being made to design political development of the country by creating an unbelievable gemischt made of old Milošević’s political forces and the new democratic forces, which are less and less democratic and in many elements are more and more non-democratic. This means more and more inclined to dirty, utilitarian political calculations in which the leading political ideas in the state of Serbia are lost. Thus, Serbia hovers eight years. And after these elections, it still hovers and is still in a state of hanging over.
Of course I am not a prophet to be able to predict either who or how or in what way will exercise pressure on the group around the Socialists (Party of Serbia -SPS), around Dačić, who will be the first to grab a bride and with her help form the government. As it seems, this will be the so-called patriotic group, and then it will be clear in which direction Serbia goes. Even if, in my opinion, the Democratic Party somehow manages to persuade this group around the Socialists to form a government together this will be a problematic government to the utmost, it will be again a kind of feudal government, the government in which ministries are being assigned like feuds, the government which I think will not be able to lead a serious and consistent policy so that, simply, my anticipations are not very optimistic regardless of the final outcome of this negotiations about constitution of the government.
Regarding the provincial elections – I wouldn’t like to speak too long and take too much time – in my opinion they are not of any epochal importance either for Serbia or even Vojvodina. Why? Simply because the provincial governmental nomenclature has no any key leverage neither according to the Constitution of the state of Serbia nor according to the legacy of that famous omnibus-law – nor they have political or financial or economic or cultural or any leverage to be able in any way to have more serious influence on the organization of life in Vojvodina in whole or in any region of Vojvodina. In a way, the third possibility of forming a democratic government or a government of democratic forces in Vojvodina, is important in a psychological sense, but in fact it has no epochal importance, I repeat once more, simply because the provincial nomenclature has no serious political authority so that it is not crucial at all who will rule the Province from a simple reason – which I have already written in one of my articles – i.e. the dramatically opened question whether Vojvodina exists at all except as geographical concept. Does Vojvodina really exist as political society within the framework of the Serbian political society? Because Vojvodina is possible only as an organized political community with certain attributes of authority and Vojvodina in its essential sense has no such attributes of authority. We have a tendency, naturally, to live in illusions and thus also in an illusion that the autonomy of Vojvodina exists. In my opinion it doesn’t essentially exist. Therefore, who is to occupy what in an essential sense doesn’t exist is not of some special material importance. It can be of some psychological importance but certainly not of material one.
In other words, to sum up, we face time of great uncertainty and no matter how these concrete trade-mathematic calculations and scheming for a new government ends, this country will be staggering and staggering. Simply, we should prepare ourselves to who knows how many years of staggering. That’s all, for the time being.

Mirko Đorđević: Perhaps I shouldn’t speak at all, not for a long anyway because I speak too much. When I am tired with myself what is then with others, God forbid. However, if you give me the floor and until you cut me off, I’ll say few words.
Sure, I agree with reasoning of the colleague, but as it was it was – the results of these elections are and aren’t surprising. Not to spend much time on that, as perhaps at this very moment, or perhaps tomorrow, a tripartite pact is being made. Yes, yes, don’t be afraid, a tripartite pact, it’s in our blood! A tripartite pact against democracy, yes, yes, yes, everything repeats to us here … between Koštunica, Šešelj and Milošević, in fact just if you see who are today their representatives you see how things go. In any case, the shadow of such a pact hangs over Serbia and for a long time already, a long time surely, so that elections resolve something, also something they don’t resolve, but here however happened, within these elections, a surprise, a pleasant one – that the Radicals are “eroded”, to loose 10 percent is not so trivial. They have always been on that rising line of theirs, and now there is a chance to really speak openly and clearly.
One of the leaders of tripartite pact, the idol, whatever, Doctor Koštunica – I wouldn’t here speak about his papers and his ideas – the papers are sparse, the ideas, thank God, there are none so we’ll skip him. However, another member of this pact, Doctor Šešelj, has written, hold me to word, in total 100 books, 100 books this man has produced. In the history of Serbian literature, of journalism, we have had not such a prolific writer. I am not going to claim here that I have read all these 100 books but really I have read a good part of these books, what to do, such is my trade, somebody has to do a dirty part. Not all can be doing fine jobs.
All sorts of things you can find in these books! I will not be bothering you, there is not a single scientific idea, they are absolutely worthless. He constructs some Greater Serbia, he mulls over Vuk Karadžić, Starčević, he draws some boundaries, all these is absolutely worthless for any at all serious study and no wonder that until today there hasn’t been any discussion nor a book about him that a publicist or whoever would produce. His latest idea, already popular, you have heard these last days on the radio and television, and one book he has dedicated to it – that that guy, Zvezdan Jovanović, who assassinated constitutional Serbian prime minister, is no more nor less but a Gavrilo Princip. Now, I am not going to lecture history here, but if that guy who assassinated the prime minister in such a mean and cowardly way is a Gavrilo Princip, then ouch and woe! We haven’t yet solved the question of that Gavrilo Princip from 1914, though historians are aware that it hadn’t brought us no luck but bogged us in a great misery with consequences we still feel today. And here is, you see, the problem. And at the end you see that everything is in the hands of this trio.
I am not a forecaster and I don’t like to be one because whenever I foretell something I happened to be right and I was a bad prophet, an evil prophet – everything has been fulfilled. It is possible that they come to power in some of these combinations, but in that case – to continue with the idea of colleague Perović – what remains for us? Not to wait for a favorite wind in history but what is imminent is a sort of awakening the civic and human consciousness, a sort of resistance, non-violent of course, against that government that not only will take us away from Europe (actually we are an European country, so what’s problem with it?) but to hold us back, lock us in one place, you know. That’s what I fear. Therefore, it is really important now to follow carefully what’s going on because look, if the Radicals have recorded, in spite of fall which is not small, also a certain rise, the aforementioned Dr. Koštunica has several percent, but he will be their prime minister … see where these games lead to.
I’m not going to bother you with these games, everything is possible in these games. These are the political-mafia games without frontiers and there is no end to them, but one shouldn’t forget that even this Serbia, which said them “no” gathering around Tadić (such as he is, but he is our state leader and our constitutional head of state), and this Serbia has secured not so small success and this bloc shouldn’t give up. About this, about the results either tonight or tomorrow, here will speak those who are, journalistically, more informed. Currently we have no government. They have created such situation on purpose. We have technical government in which Koštunica is the supreme technician. To make it worse all this happens – if I have to say also a word about the church – when we have also a technical synod that administers the church.
Yes, yes, yes, just so – this is not irony at all. You know how the assembly went on – well, it’s better you don’t know, it is not so much important, the Patriarch is not able to act in that capacity but he remains the Patriarch. He remains the Patriarch! They cannot overthrow Him; it is not possible to skirt the Constitution. But, the assembly ended with something that no assembly in the history of our church for full eight and a half centuries ever before ended with. The Synod has taken over a complete authority of the Patriarch, his duties and obligations, but the structure of the Synod hasn’t been publicly known. (The Synod is the church government, the assembly is parliament). For the first time the structure of the Synod hasn’t been publicly announced, who makes the Synod. You may say – probably the old members. No! Just at this assembly terms of two members expired and we are not informed that they were replaced through the standard procedure so that we have a kind of the Synod that governs the church in the name of the Patriarch.
I wouldn’t bother you with the ecclesiastical problems, but you see … the church is a part of society, this our society, of us all. Who goes to church goes, who doesn’t go it’s one’s right not to go, but to us who care for the church, this gives no hope and it is literally an irregular situation, both in the state and in the church likewise waiting the outcome and one leads to another, actually these two institutions since a long time have been acting and functioning on the principle of connected vessels. This is one example for you, a simple one. We shall see. They will have to reveal who makes the government. There are four of them and the fifth is presiding. The Patriarch is presiding, he is ill, so that the oldest one presides instead and so on, it is all as it should be, but we haven’t got this list of names. The statement contains a severe criticism of the media; allegedly reporting from the assembly was bad. I didn’t quite get it, in the media, in newspapers there were all sort of this and that, but I don’t know what kind of reporting it can be when the assembly was held behind closed doors protected by the special security forces. Thus, what sort of reporting was that and who made a mistake. But there is something else, there is a sentence that runs – the assembly is astounded by what journalists were doing. Astounded – that was the expression used. And I would only add, not to be too long – what about the public, both the church public and lay public are also astounded and cannot recover from the statements that one member of the assembly, Kosovo’s Bishop Artemije, made and repeated them four times and they are as follows – “Boris Tadić, the defense minister Šutanovac and Jeremić are traitors” (quote-end). If you claim that someone is a traitor without any proofs, this should have caused perplexity among people. This they didn’t discuss as you see. In this sense, the situation is really quite serious.
What I would also say, what also the colleague Perović said, and to finish this first part, this is about Vojvodina. Of course that state of things is as he related, we should keep in mind that Vojvodina as a model, linguistic, political, has survived a lot of changes and today is considered by the world as a successful model. Very interesting. What hasn’t changed there! What states haven’t been broken up and at the European universities they defend doctoral dissertations (I have read seven of them) that provide evidence that Vojvodina’s cultural model – more nations, multiculturalism, several spoken languages, equality – has survived and in this sense they cite Vojvodina as the example of something that should be followed. There are no minorities in France, all there are French, there is no minorities. There are actually as plenty of them as you can imagine, but their law is as it is. Therefore, Vojvodina exists. If it is not present, it is a fault, in the political sense, of Vojvodina’s politicians who have failed to cope with situation, but Vojvodina as a model with a long history of its own – exists. At least, this here has been for some two and a half centuries a part of Europe and if only there were luck as it hadn’t been, it should have been the driving force and not vice versa and that’s why these Vojvodina’s ballots are not now to be underestimated. The approach should be more careful. That’s all and if someone has any questions I am here to answer them, but perhaps this was a bit too long. Thank you.

Dinko Gruhonjić: Alpar, when we have already began the story about Vojvodina I think that Mirko has provided a cue for our story the one we discussed during our drive to Mitrovica, that if Serbia joins EU it would be the most profitable for Vojvodina, which would, let’s pathetically say, return home, actually return to place where it once had belonged to and what makes its natural environment. In your opinion, what are the chances of Vojvodina to return there after these pessimistic views about the constitution of government in Belgrade?

Alpar Lošonc: Well, considering that my predecessors have defined so well the current political moment let me talk about this theme from a broader perspective. Only in few words what is in my opinion at stake, since long ago actually, in these elections in Serbia especially after, as was previously said, the 2000 political coup. I think that what’s at stake can be very simply stated – at stake is actually the issue that Serbia becomes a normal small country. When I say a small country, this attribute has no pejorative meaning but simply expresses one entity with certain, let’s say, resources or I may say that at stake is that Serbia remains a normal semi-peripheral country. This I say also because, and I stress because, of that adamant fact that it seems that a good part of the political elites in Serbia cannot accept this course that is, naturally, a certain regression, especially in relation to some earlier projections.
I agree that now time planes, in the context of these elections, are mixed up so that from time to time it is very difficult to make difference between the nineties and the period after 2000. Of course, I would never equalize these two periods but there is too much continuity between that period which is at least chronologically behind us and this decade we now live in. It seems to me that there is one constant in the Serbian political space and it seems to me that just that, if you wish, epic constant also characterizes these election processes and also the period before us. I would say that problem is that in Serbia it is governed in a way that government is divided and not limited. This is very important because if we take this into account we can throw light on various modes of governing, on the various modes of realization of governing. It seems that in this respect, this crucial view of governing which is divided and not limited, we can characterize i.e. we can recognize just mentioned continuity between the earlier and the current period. This (as was said a moment ago, I only cite it) political coup initiated after 2000, included then, as far as I can remember, several paradigms that were in play. The first paradigm was an ethnocentric paradigm. What does it mean? This ethnocentric paradigm emerged as a sort of reaction to the communist organization of reality. I will say also few sentences about the communist organization of reality. Ethnocentric paradigm, so characteristic for the last decade of the past millennium, starts with the hierarchy pattern among various ethnicities. Certain ethnicity, and in general it is the majority that has the natural majority in relation to the state, means that certain ethnicity simply has certain historical rights and other ethnicities, just according to logic of natural differences, simply must follow this kind of ruling logic. Ethnocentrism in the last instance actually creates certain segregation of differences, and so a certain segregation between the majority and the minority. This is, in my opinion, a really essential characteristic of politics, ethno-politics of Serbia in the ‘90s. And I would also mention as a crucial characteristic of this paradigm that ethnocentrism, therefore, doesn’t want even that that is sometimes called a soft assimilation of differences but it has no interest at all for differences because the most important for it is to govern through ethnocentrism.
Another paradigm that was the weakest I think after 2000 is actually the relic of the past. I would call it the communist integrationalism. Communism, whatever it may mean now, I wouldn’t concretize this issue – I think that all of us intuitively know what it is about – hence communism wanted to integrate the entire society but not any super-national ideological whole, and that communist integrationalism recognized differences but only in the measure in which these differences could be used as a vehicle for that super-national ideological whole. And for communist integrationalism it was very characteristic what a minute ago I called a soft assimilation of differences. However, after 2000, the most primitive anti-communism which dominated in the discursive space of Serbia, annulled many of these important traces of communist integrationalism.
And there is the third paradigm which is, I think, by many things a leading one among the intellectual elites – the liberal nationalism, which actually blends two, let’s say, political traditions. In its elemental orientation it also doesn’t want to integrate society but instead it would integrate nation, which means that it recognizes certain differences but only in the sense of control, only in the sense of possibility to control all and in the sense that one nation remains to rule the public space, in fact the national culture of the given nation would determine the public space. Considering that the liberal nationalism is a fitting ideology for a great part of elites in Serbia, I think even the economic elite – as colleague Milenko has earlier pointed out – tycoons can very much have their interest in governing, in leading these processes. Then it is not just by chance, I think, that this liberal nationalism in many aspects dominates the ideological discourses of Serbia.
And as relates these elections, I wouldn’t skip and owe answer to Dinko. I think that there is no place … no place for euphoria, for euphoric mood, because these basic patterns will hardly change. These fundamental patterns I have just mentioned as an expression of the hybrid reality in Serbia, represent an actually deep structure and regardless of political alchemy, regardless of political arithmetic, which is really uncertain, we still have these fundamental patterns and actually we have no any fourth solution that may bring change in relation to these patterns. If we analyze results of these elections we really face this basic fact that Serbia is halved, that there are various blocks and, moreover, it can be said that even the support to European integration has a very amorphous character, an ambiguous character. Serbia has never had a broader democratic discussion what it means to join the European integration structures. So while, let’s say, one side was absolutely against, the other side was for, but as I say, always without necessary explanations. Thus it has never been properly articulated what is the meaning of all this. I say, to join the European integration structures or, better to say, the European Union we actually understand as an expression, a projection of our wishful thinking. The European Union as an institutional infrastructure can be also that, a chance, but in the first instance it is the frame within certain rules have to be respected, which means there are certain rights but also certain obligations. Some friends of mine, much more cynical than I am, say that in some situations, when something enormous should be undertaken, it may be perhaps better not to know what risk you are undertaking. As I am obsessively attached to some democratic issues, I don’t find it good policy, because not knowing what risk you are undertaking, in what space of risk, what space of realizing interests you enter, then what you later get is disappointment. So it would be good in any case to learn everything available, and we can learn on the examples of other countries. The fact that in Serbia the so-called transition has been postponed several times already, and that to join Europe is being constantly postponed due to political instability, gives us an excellent chance to see what was happening in other countries, actually to learn, to realize some lessons.
It stands to reason what Dinko said, that Vojvodina in all this has a certain chance. Examples from other countries, let’s say the neighboring countries, Romania, Hungary and other countries, show that by joining the European integration structures you will not automatically level regional differences, but these regions that have, for instance, institutional capacities and other capacities, these regions that have the proper infrastructure, show an envious level of development and an envious level of developing further already existing possibilities. Then really stands to reason that Vojvodina can be seen as a winner, as a possible winner if Serbia joins Europe and this all according an optimistic scenario, but I stress, this is a really optimistic scenario with some utopien elements. Vojvodina therefore can become the engine for Serbia and the results, positive, in view of the political culture and in view of economy can be spread on to other parts of Serbia. I say, this is one really positive scenario. There are, I would say, some grotesque elements in all this i.e. that we depend on Milošević’s party, like in some badly tuned psychoanalytic drama, a psychoanalytical scene, in which some repressed symptoms re-emerge later, so to us really returns Milošević’s ghost from dead. And what’s more grotesque is that a man with the parochial, provincial nimbus, like Palma is, becomes a sort of savior of the European future of Serbia. Simply one must think how it happens that this strategically defined future for us now depends on someone who, among other things, contributed enormously to some excessive violence in the nineties. Thank you.

Dinko Gruhonjić: Thank you. Teofil, one of your favorite stories when we speak about Vojvodina are Vojvodina’s trains in time of autonomists and so on, the trains which were somehow cleaner and somehow non-smoking, and arrived on time …

Milenko Perović: No, but there were no such militant attacks against smokers …
Dinko Gruhonjić: Today, when we took Alpar from Temerin and were driving to Sremska Mitrovica – there is one railroad crossing in Temerin – I widely opened my eyes watching for incoming railbus or a locomotive – Alpar told me – “Just go on freely nobody passes here, there are no trains any more.” Here you have a small cue for Vojvodina as on the other side President Tadić said, I think it was yesterday or the day before yesterday, how today we have an excellent historical chance for a new Serbian reunion, for reconciliation of political forces from the nineties and the political forces of the 2000’s…

Teofil Pančić: OK, let’s say you have given me more cues than I have expected so in order not to let them slip me or being forgotten, let’s first speak about them. There, as regards Vojvodina’s trains it was really so in one period, say, at the mid-eighties. I remember well these details. So, if you travel from Novi Sad to Belgrade by train and smoking there is strictly forbidden so that conductor comes to warn you if you smoke (I was smoker than, fortunately not any more), he warns you that smoking is not allowed. If you ignore the warning, there is people’s militia present in the train and they intervene. And what happens next? We travel and travel and arrive to Nova Pazova. As you know Nova Pazova is, according to today’s dictionary, the administrative border between the proper Serbia and Vojvodina. In Nova Pazova, Vojvodina’s militia leaves the train and the very moment they are out, you will see that a half of passengers in the train lights a cigarette. Hurrah, long live freedom! And I say that such an understanding of freedom gave birth to that anti-bureaucratic revolution, this is how our people understand freedom – I can do whatever I want to and I don’t give a hang, and who is one to call me to account, especially to some good-for-nothing and twerps who cannot stand, just imagine that, the smoke of tobacco and similar – so that in this sense I was speaking about trains and when we speak about trains I came here to Mitrovica by train. I feel a bit nostalgic about traveling by train because in the country of Serbia, of course, every traveling by train is an absolute, how to put it, an idiotic act as such, but because I knew that this is an international train bound for Zagreb and further on for Slovenia, Italy and on, I got up courage and I didn’t regret, but we must take an international train in Serbia so as to, you see, travel decently at all by this conveyance.
And now, this story about train is not unimportant, I think that we shall again return to these details of everyday life, but in connection with these things you asked me, I think that something should be said, both in respect of elections in Serbia and in respect of Vojvodina. When Vojvodina comes to the agenda, don’t let me forget to say something about this dialectic of the majority and the minority we have heard here. First, as regards elections in Serbia, this national reconciliation that Tadić, you see, talks about and which will probably initiate many discussions in these days, with reason, because the topic is quite challenging and can be endlessly manipulated, I think that it is – to make things clear – only an empty phrase that serves to somehow assemble that government. Hence, let’s invent some pompous idea that will cover all. Meaning that that would enable us to explain to our followers why we go with the Socialists (SPS) and top of SPS will explain to their followers that, you see, in the name of that high idea like national reconciliation (of course, I say that it is only an empty phrase without real meaning and cannot contribute to anything sensible but, possibly, to sort of constitution of that government, if it is constituted at all). It cannot contribute from many reasons of which the most interesting for our story is that it simply means nothing.
This is a very pompous phrase, as used in many post-communist countries, in many transition countries – some have been thinking about reconciliation since World War Two, some about reconciliation between communists and anti-communists and so on. I don’t know what reconciliation this would exactly be in our case. If we speak that now those forces that had led the country in the nineties should be reconciled with those forces that led it after 2000, you know that this is not a problem at all to make it in a circle of political brass hats – simply one coalition is formed and they reconcile and finally work together. I think, it is their domain and such things we have seen and will see in politics and there is nothing to be shocked about. However, clearly, the national reconciliation in the form that the Socialists (SPS) will like to agree is neither possible nor desirable.
What does it mean? We cannot forget the nineties; we cannot forget that we know whose guilt it is, who is responsible for the nineties. We cannot start now looking on the nineties as on some elemental disaster, as on natural force for which nobody – no man no individual no party no organization, hence none actually – is guilty, is responsible, led to it, maintained it and so on, but to look, see, as if it was some metaphysical disaster that befell upon the Serbian people, which would be in general in the agreement with that ideology of national reconciliation. We cannot accept it, except if we want to become … simply, to be self-lobotomized. It is plainly impossible, impossible that a civic society accepts it, impossible for historians to accept it, impossible for the media to accept it, impossible for any member of the society to accept it. Therefore, in that form that the Socialists would like – like rehabilitation of Milošević, then to stop to, as they say, persecuting his family, then this and then that – I think that all this is nothing but gobbledygook – it is, how to say, such things cannot happen nor I guess none of us, fortunately, would allow it to happen.
So I wouldn’t overestimate the meaning of this, it is simply an unfounded and empty phrase nor it can have any real foundation and if it contributes at all to anything sensible good, we shall forget it quickly, won’t we? Now, as regards the elections as such, I wouldn’t speak much and spend time on it because enough has been said on the topic. What do these elections in Serbia mean – the colleagues that spoke before me explained it very well and now, not to repeat their words, it is generally as it is, the situation that we now have and about which we shall probably discuss more this evening.

Dinko Gruhonjić: I think that it is time now to give you also chance to ask questions or to comment, so please, go on.

Voice from the audience: Good evening to you all. Here, first, it is very strange, especially of Mr. Pančić, that none of you here, the respected heads and really clever people, haven’t called the thing by its true name. I will give my anticipation of the post-election moment in Serbia, as I feel it at the moment, and this is that some, let’s call them the pro-European forces, are the only and quite possibly rather insufficiently strong barrier to stop Serbia’s sinking into the fascism (which you call nationalism, or apply other euphemistic names). I will draw a parallel you all know very well, a parallel between Serbia today and the Weimer Germany of the ‘30s. I actually don’t know at all whether then those clever Social-Democratic Germans were aware what Hitler then represented, and even less so because he didn’t run for election with his final solution as his program. The only difference is perhaps that currently in Serbia we have no big problems with the Jews but then there are enough of us, the “traitors”. I am not sure that the Social-Democrats and the great majority of Germans in the thirties believed that Dachau and Auschwitz would be very soon put into operation. What you Teofil said – “I doubt that there will be concentration camps” – I, on the contrary, have no doubts. We have them nine years ago in, to us, very close surroundings. It means that we shouldn’t deceive ourselves that this is the question of whether Serbia is going to join Europe but the question whether Serbia will remain in fascism. To me, this is a crucial question of these elections.

Dinko Gruhonjić: Perhaps I can say something about this before we continue. This is what worries me, also, to be sincere, because in, let’s say ’89, when the Berlin Wall fell here, with us, an absolutely opposite process was under way, with us in these days Sloba was riding high on Gazimestan. Then we all thought, well, no way, the Berlin Wall fell, Europe unites, he is just a passing incident, something like hail, let’s say, or similar, However, he did ride high and incredible crimes had been committed in the same time when Europe was uniting, in all those 10 years of our criminal past.

Milenko Perović: Listen, please, I’m going to tell a joke just to make us relax a bit. In this country nothing can be done properly to the end so neither racism could be brought to the very end. Fortunately, and it is both our ontological misfortune during these 20 years as it is our fortune, that in racism we couldn’t be like Germans had been in the past. Thus Serbia wasn’t like Germany in 1945, Serbia wasn’t leveled to the ground nor carpeted with bombs. Only owing to that here, in my opinion, we essentially don’t speak about that fascist solution nor about ultra-right solution but about ontological thieves. I once politely called them klepto-nationalists, with an accent on klepto, because that whole nationalist story, if we put aside the moment when it spread among the population and when people began to believe in this story, but take only those producing the story and organizing, controlling and leading, their interest is, before all, to clean out this society and to rob each of us, and they do it efficiently, just look the Radicals in the nineties, the Radical leadership, ultranationalist, ultra-fascist – they are today enormously rich people. And this is the essence. And their intention is to remain rich. And one can be rich and make progress even more so if being in power.

Teofil Pančić: I would like to say just one thing – simply a man collects some experience. God knows that I have attended hundreds and hundreds panels throughout this country and it so often happens that one man who listens, in this case five panelists not exactly known to hesitate to call things by their true names, waits until these five men finish, to say – I listened you, all five of you, but how happens that none of you said, called things by their true name! – And then, I guess, he goes home fulfilled in a way – he has fired a shot! And these five only watch – what a fucking, in vain I have been writing 20 years about fascism in this country, in vain I have been speaking 20 years about fascism in this country, a man stood up and clearly cut me off, I didn’t call the thing by its true name, that’s what he says.
Don’t do such thing, let’s talk seriously. It is no problem to call fascism when there is fascism. And if I wanted to use the word in that context in which you want I would use it. However, if I didn’t do it then I certainly have a strong reason and it is not that I suddenly like, all at once I begin to like, euphemisms. Hence simply, all we had, we had – we had these camps also – these camps are something about which I wrote then and I don’t speak about that now. These camps were not intended for political opponents but we know it very well, and you in Srem know very well for what people and what category of population and war prisoners they were intended for and there were just a few media that at that time could at all whisper about that, so everyone who wanted to know that then, could know it and there is nothing more to say.
I cannot now say that some future government prepares some new camps, because I have absolutely no any indications of that. And this has nothing to do with Hitler and whether somebody in 1933 knew that Dachau would work. One had no any need to know that Dachau would come, but Hitler had a very clear anti-Semite program and he put it into motion the first day he came to power. Read, there is a book published in Novi Sad, “History of One German” by Sebastian Hafner. In 1933, that man instantly lost his job and many other things, and he wasn’t even a Jew! He expressed some doubts about Nazism and he was immediately called a domestic traitor, immediately lost his job and so on.
Therefore, there is no mystery there, no need to know that Dachau would follow because it was clear and everybody who had voted for Hitler had to know already in 1933 that he had voted for a racist, that he had voted for one who publicly advocated that members of some other nation and religion should be persecuted, for the beginning to be sacked and thus unable to lead normal life, that they were a sort of scabs on the body of German people etc. Hence there were no any mystifications. However, political opponents will always very well manipulate if you use words carelessly. If you shout three times “fascist” for anybody you don’t like, the fourth time when you shout “fascist” for a true fascist, people will remain indifferent – well, this one constantly speaks about some fascists. Therefore, I beg you to speak seriously. Thank you!

(The author is the Head of Department of Philosophy at the Philosophic Faculty in Novi Sad. This text is written especially for site www.autonomija.info )

AUTONOMY AS THE PREREQUISITE OF DEVELOPMENT

Direct beneficiaries and administrators of the public property were economic organizations whose founders were the Province’s bodies and local self-government that executed control in comply with the corresponding federal and provincial laws. Taxes and dues from the citizens and economic organizations were the source of income exclusively intended for needs of republics and provinces. All taxes and dues from the territory of Vojvodina were at disposal of the citizens of Vojvodina through the provincial and municipal bodies and organizations in Vojvodina. The budget of the Republic of Serbia collected taxes and dues exclusively from Serbia proper. Property and fiscal autonomy of republics and provinces were founded on the principle stipulated by the 1974 Constitution of SFRY according which republics and provinces were responsible for their own development and all together for the development of SFRY.
Advocates of centralism and unitarianism in politics, economy and sciences were criticizing the principle of responsibility granted to republics and provinces to plan their own development. They claimed that this principle would lead to the creation of national economies in republics and provinces. Unitarians in Serbia especially disapproved of the property rights and fiscal autonomy of Vojvodina and Kosovo, as two provinces within the Republic of Serbia.
During the real autonomy of Vojvodina, in the period from 1974 to 1990, when Vojvodina managed all material assets on the territory of Vojvodina, the Province had achieved the most dynamic development. These were the years of the most successful development of Vojvodina in its history. Vojvodina then recorded the average growth of about six percent GDP, the growth of industrial production about eight percent and the growth of agricultural production about 2-3 percent annually.
The economic development of Vojvodina was in agreement with the adopted 4-year public development plans passed by the Assembly of AP Vojvodina. Reports on realization of these public plans were submitted to and analyzed by the Assembly of AP Vojvodina. The documents on development from this period illustrate and confirm successful development of Vojvodina when it was autonomous but also the development of personal and social standards of the citizens of Vojvodina. In that period the greatest development was realized in the social sector in Vojvodina, in education, health care and scientific work. Lagging in the development of Vojvodina behind other regions in Yugoslavia was over and the share of Vojvodina in GNP of Yugoslavia was growing.

DYNAMIC DEVELOPMENT INTERRUPTED

The successful investment policy of Vojvodina in the period illustrates numerous new objects in material production, in agriculture, food processing industry, oil production and refining and in other fields. In ten years, from 1974 to 1984, only across the Danube six new bridges were built (at Bezdan, Bogojevo, Bačka Palanka, Novi Sad, Beška and Kovin).
Unfortunately, the dynamic development of Vojvodina was interrupted by clashes on the political scene of Serbia when, in 1987, Slobodan Milošević and the forces that supported him came to power. The campaign of Slobodan Milošević with aim to turn Yugoslavia into Serboslavia began in 1988 via Vojvodina that was in that time, beside Belgrade, the most developed and in both the cultural and civilization aspects the most respectful part of the Republic of Serbia. In 1989, through coerced amendments to the Constitution from 1974, contrary to the Constitution of SFRY, the constitutional coup was carried out in Vojvodina and subsequently formally confirmed by Milošević’s Constitution passed in 1990. Vojvodina lost its legislative, executive and judiciary powers and by that also its right to manage and administer material assets on its territory. By this, the way was opened for collapse not only of economy but the complete structure of Vojvodina.
When at the end of 1995 then autocratic government of the Republic of Serbia began loosing positions, first at the local and regional levels, the centralization of usability and management of material assets was effected. The centralization had the objective to preserve the basic positions of power. Defeat at elections in certain parts at the local level was the first indicator that the autocratic regime of Slobodan Milošević and his satraps began to fall apart.
Contrary even to the 1990 Constitution, by the Law on Ownership of the Means of the Republic of Serbia from 1995, nationalization of all material assets (except the personal property of citizens) was effected for the benefit of the Republic of Serbia. By this Law an unparalleled anti-constitutional nationalization was executed without any recompense for dispossession of property. By this, Serbia became the most centralized country in Europe. The local self-governments and AP Vojvodina remained only with the formal sings but actually deprived of their material basis for development and survival.
Even Milošević’s Constitution from 1990 didn’t foresee the confiscation of property without real compensation. This Law is today an objective obstacle for the process of transition of the Republic of Serbia into a democratic society but at the same time it blocks integration of the Republic of Serbia into the European political and legislative system. Serbia is today the only state in Europe in which territorial autonomy and local self-governments have no property.
Contrary to the Constitution, all communal infrastructure mostly built by voluntary taxes, was declared the state property. According to the legal norms of all civilized democratic states such infrastructure should be the property of citizens being built by their means. By the bureaucratic process this infrastructure has been taken away from citizens and declared the state property of the bureaucratic structure of the Republic of Serbia.

NEW CONSTITUITION – MILOŠEVIĆ’s DESIGN!

The revolt of citizens throughout the Republic of Serbia overthrew the regime of Slobodan Milošević in 2000, but not the main leverages of power of the regime. Therefore even a new Constitution of the Republic of Serbia from 2006 has preserved all essential characteristics of the power characteristic for Milošević’s red-black coalition. By its new Constitution, Serbia is only ostensibly and formally decentralized but the state organization and management of material assets are still centralized and in the hands of authorities of the Republic. Neither new passed laws on organization of the Republic and the local self-governments enable decentralization of decision-making structures and managing the material assets but instead foresee that this should be, allegedly, stipulated by some future regulations, when and if brought.
In spite of illegitimacy and changed constitutional-legal situation the Law on Means in Ownership of the Republic of Serbia from 1995 is still applied in full. In this aspect, contrary to the new Constitution of Serbia, the anti-constitutional situation from Milošević’s period still continues.
By the centralized management of material assets Serbia today also infringes the valid documents of the Council of Europe of which Serbia is full member. The Charter of the Council of Europe on the local self-government, as well as the Recommendation by the Congress of Regional and Local Governments of the Council of Europe foresee for the regional autonomy and local self-government to own property because this makes an integral component of autonomy and self-government.
At the same time, this Law impedes the balanced development of the whole Serbia because due to total centralization today’s republic bodies have neither ability nor capacity for the rational and economical management of the whole property in the ownership of the Republic of Serbia.
As AP Vojvodina is being left without possibility to manage its source of revenues, its property and real estates of regional importance on the territory of Vojvodina, this contributes to further collapse of Vojvodina and its degradation and exploitation. Therefore for all citizens of Vojvodina, as well as for local self-governments throughout Serbia regardless of their political orientation, today’s basic interest is to return their property that had been taken away by means of political force.

WHAT DOES THE VENICE COMMISSION SAY?

Justified discontent of the citizens of Vojvodina with the new Constitution of Serbia has been approved by the Venice Commission as the expert body of the Council of Europe. This Commission criticized the fact that the new Constitution has omitted to define accurately the sources of revenues and also the property of the Province and local self-governments, having left this to voluntary preferences of the political parties when they pass the future laws on sources of revenue and property of Vojvodina and local self-governments. Such critical opinion expressed by the Venice Commission will, apart from other implications, remain the obstacle for integration of Serbia into European economic and political system.

Todor Gajinov (The author is advisor to the President of the Assembly of AP Vojvodina)

(Danas)

Thank you. Thus, as you have heard, I am Pavel Domonji, a slave and servant of the Helsinki Committee. When Nedim told me that I should take part in this seminar I was slightly skeptical. Why so? Due to several reasons. First, in difference to Teofil Pančić I am not a media addict. Hence, I don’t follow, I don’t read nor I listen to everything that can be followed, read or listened to – that’s my privilege in relation to him. Secondly, I belong to a more conservative part of the public, which means that I favor more printed media than other forms of the media, but I don’t even follow all printed media. For instance, I don’t follow what I call gun-media. The role of the media is to provide their audience with timely, accurate, objective information in order that we, their readers, the consumers of these media, can form our own opinion, to bring our own judgment, to take a certain attitude. The gun-media have not the role to inform the public but to settle accounts politically with their political opponents i.e. to disqualify and discredit them morally, politically and as individuals. They don’t help readers to orient themselves in reality but, simply, they try to disorientate them, to bring them into situation to think that, look, by mistake they get brain, that it is failure in evolution, that it would be best to take their brain out, salt and store it into pantry with ham and bacon, for example. And the third reason is – I am handicapped when speaking on the topic of reporting on Vojvodina because I hardly speak even my maternal language, let alone other minority languages, so I cannot follow what the media in the Hungarian, the Slovakian, the Ruthenian, the Romanian write; I can follow let’s say “Hrvatska Riječ” /Croatian Word/ because I understand it, but I cannot follow these other media and can not judge about their reporting on Vojvodina. However, in spite of all that I have just said, it is my impression (there, I speak only at the level of impression) that the media don’t cover Vojvodina as much as they should do. Why so? Simply because the issue of Vojvodina is not the issue about which the political class of this country is trying to achieve consensus, the issue of Vojvodina is not the pivotal issue, therefore it is not the key and important issue, such issue at this moment is the issue of Kosovo.
I don’t know if any of you read Koštunica’s Christmas epistle at the beginning of this year, which “Politika” brought on January 6th or 7th (Koštunica’s address to the citizens of Serbia). To remind you, he said in it: – We don’t give Kosovo, Kosovo is another name for Serbia, the name of Prince Lazar is another name for truth and justice, in defending Kosovo we have faith in God, justice, truth, the international law, the world order and UN charter, – only to end his address to the citizens of Serbia with words: – No Serb has been yet born to say that Kosovo is not ours.
And now, you see, though his address begins with this, with the “citizens of Serbia”, it is clear that his addressee is ethnically very determined and definitive and that he, actually, addresses the Serbs. What fascinates me in this Koštunica’s address is that universalization of appeal. To wit, Serbia doesn’t act in her own name but she acts in the name of international law, international order, even some metaphysical ethnicity like God, counting both on the earthly and divine justice. Thus, in this sort of an essentialist, fundamentalist rhetoric, you have no reality, there is no life, no realism. There is only one ideological construction of reality, a sort of myth-poetic construction and, an another thing, mind you, if you say that Kosovo is Serbian and who cares for Albanians as they are not Serbs, then it is a sort of rhetoric you can not question because it is simply senseless. And other thing, this is therefore that kind of ethno-nationalism which is always present. And now, this ethno-nationalism is also present when Vojvodina is the issue, as you have certainly noticed that Vojvodina is being ethnically usurped, so it is said that Vojvodina is Serbian but, in difference to Kosovo, this is not the end of listing but this listing continues and it is said that Vojvodina is Serbian, that Vojvodina is Slovakian, Hungarian, Romanian and I don’t know whose else, but I have never heard that, for instance, somebody says that Vojvodina is also Romany; this I have never heard although politicians often stress this, but I have never heard that anyone mentions the Roma. Here you have another question, namely what to do with people who have no ethnical identity or, for instance, don’t expose their ethnical identity, don’t declare their nationality. Do they also own Vojvodina, does Vojvodina belong or doesn’t belong to them? However, what is important is that we are, as in the case of Kosovo so in the case of Vojvodina, faced with ‘ethnization’. What is ‘ethnization’? By ‘ethnizating’ one group it is granted more rights than another one. When one says that Vojvodina is Serbian, this means that the key questions in Vojvodina should be decided, hence, by members of the Serbian nation. What is unbelievable is that in Vojvodina there are political leaders that adopt, you see, this ethno-political logic and agree that the issue of Vojvodina is Serbian issue. The issue of autonomy is the issue encroaching on the territorial organization of state. However, this is the issue of citizens and not the issue of Serbs, Hungarian, Slovakians, etc. State belongs to citizens and it doesn’t belong either to Serbs or Hungarians or Slovakians but it belongs to citizens, naturally on condition that we care for civic equality and the principle of non-discrimination.
When I mention that various listing i.e. whose is Vojvodina, I do this in order to turn your attention to a very particular kind of culturalism which it contains. In theory, this kind of multiculturalism is called the cooperative or segregationist multiculturalism. You see, this presumes that society consists of different ethnic groups, it is formally insisted on their equality, but these ethnic groups don’t mix much, there is no communication between them. If sometimes even in this kind of multiculturalism – and mind you, nationalists are the greatest multiculturalists – if sometimes, at one moment, occurs a certain mixing, let’s say in the form of mixed marriage, then nationalists say that mixed marriages are a sort of fine, subtle assimilation of the members of minority communities. So now, what is important in such cases is, mind you, when you say that the outcome of mixed marriages is assimilation of the members of minority, this is an extremely anti-liberal position because it says that the choice of your marital partner is, a priori, determined in advance by your ethnicity. Now, the key question we have here is whether you are ready, for the sake of preserving one group or its cultural identity, to give up your own life. This is the question to which each of us should answer and bring own judgment. The similar case will be also if, for instance, you enroll your child in school in which education is in the language that is not your maternal language, therefore the same kind of objection also applies here as well, from the fact that, I don’t know, let’s say, someone may be ashamed to be a member of this or that minority or that this may lead to weakening your own community demographically, culturally, politically or whatever.
Neither situation is different when there is the question of elections. I will only remind you that at the last elections, for example, the Hungarian leaders reproached the Democratic Party because it allegedly entered into their electorate and that a great number of Hungarians voted for the Democratic Party and not for the Alliance of Vojvodina’s Hungarians, as would be logical, natural to expect, because it was the Hungarian party. I mention these examples to stress more this liberal position I care about. You see, the liberal position defends the right on an autonomous choice of each individual. You can decide to participate in reproduction and preservation of one group and its cultural identity and you can also decide to get out of that story and not to partake in it. But what is important is, that if you decide not to partake in it – I, for instance, can say: ‘I don’t give a damn for Slovakians, I am not interested for the Slovakian minority or preservation of the Slovakian language, Slovakian literature, tradition, culture, all this is phooey to me, I don’t want to take part in that, I simply want to get out of that story’ – from the viewpoint of this liberal position it is quite OK. What is important is that I, as an individual, shouldn’t suffer any consequences. To wit, the members of my group shouldn’t despise me, shouldn’t scorn or stigmatize me or use some more drastic measures of condemnation. Why? Because, if I can get out of that story without consequences, their presence in that story of participating in the reproduction of culture, obtains the character of being voluntary. There will be no such voluntary character if I am attacked, stigmatized, beaten, insulted, spit upon or whatever. Hence, I feel close to this kind of liberal multiculturalism. This liberal multiculturalism insists on the central position of an individual in relation to his group. It insists also on the strict separating line between the private and public spheres. It places culture in this private sphere as an expression of particularity, whilst the public or the political spheres are ruled by universalistic principles.
Which is the key universalistic principle in politics? Now, with elections approaching us, which is that key principle? The key principle is one man – one vote. Now, nationalists say or the members of minorities say that the principle one man – one vote doesn’t give the opportunity to members of minorities to be elected and get seat in the parliament. Why? Because their number is too small, they cannot pass the election threshold if it is too high. Hence they ask correction of this crucial liberal universalistic principle. Now, you have different mechanisms for correction. It can be either a lower threshold, or quotes, or granted mandates, but it also can be that, let’s say, big parties open their lists for members of minorities, so that they can put the members of minorities on their lists and thus enable them to get a seat in the parliament. Here again you get a sort of objection as expressed by nationalists as they deny the right of members of minorities who are, for example, on the list of Democratic Party (you know that the Democratic Party opened for this election its lists so that among candidates for representatives are the Slovakians, the Bulgarians, the Croats and I don’t know who else), they deny the right and their objection is that they cannot in the parliament represent interests of their minorities because they are bound by the party discipline to represent the interest of that party. What is arguable here is that you never hear this same kind of objection when, for example, a Croat or a Hungarian, whichever, got elected to the parliament from the list of their national parties. Hence, you never have this kind of objection, that he represents interests of his party but, furthermore, it is said that he represents the interest of minority but not only of his minority but interests of all minorities. Hence, like in the case of Kosovo, you have a kind of an ideological construction, totalizing universalization. Here, the party identifies itself with nation, which is extremely wrong, and one of consequences includes these accusations for the national betrayal.
When we had elections, in 2003 or 2004? Then, you know, the Hungarian parties came out to elections in two separate columns, Agošton and Pal Šandor were in one coalition. Kasza was in another, and there was one press conference in Novi Sad at which Jozsef Kasza accused Agošton for the national betrayal. But mind you, regardless of the way in which the representative of one minority entered the parliament, we should make things fully clear: the presence of minorities in the parliament has essentially no impact on decisions passed by this parliament. The presence of minorities has a strong, not political, but symbolic meaning, because it enables the members of minorities to get seats in the parliament, the society sends the message that it respects its minorities: on the other side, this in return gives also the higher legitimacy of the parliament and decisions it passes because they are then accepted in a greater measure.
But two more things are here clear or important. Namely, regardless which of these instruments of positive discrimination you employ you violate the universalistic rule, one man – one vote. And another thing, there is the question whether the violation of this principle can be tolerated and justified. The answer is yes, in affirmative, the principle can be violated if its correction enables achieving the higher value than the one which is being violated. To wit, in this case this would be to preserve the ethnical peace in the society, to pacify conflicts, to downgrade eruption of conflicts, to contribute to de-radicalization of relations, etc.
And now, as Vojvodina is one truly pluralistic community, a very important question is how in such a society to achieve cohesion of its culturally different segments, If in one society you have domination of ethno-nationalism, as you still have in Serbia, hardly that you can achieve the higher level of cohesion from one you already have. But what is also important is that some crucial documents of such society don’t support the violation of cohesion.
Now you see, Serbia has recently got its new Constitution and this Constitution defines Serbia as the state of Serbian people and other citizens. Now, if we wish to apply a bit of logic gymnastics we could say that Serbs are not citizens namely that citizens are not Serbs, and as one article of the Constitution stipulates that sovereignty belongs to citizens, then here we can also apply logic and say that Serbs are not sovereign, that only citizens are sovereign. What does it mean? This means that the authors of this Constitution haven’t succeeded in finding a common characteristic for all citizens of Serbia regardless of their ethnicity. And now, nationalists argue that the Constitution had to define that Serbia is the state of Serbian people and other citizens because in Serbia lives the majority of Serbs and because the Serbs are one that contributed most in founding the state of Serbia. What is arguable questionable in this argument? What do you think, what is questionable here?
All in former Yugoslavia wanted to have their own states, Serbia had so much insisted on sovereignty but was the only one that hadn’t brought decision to confirm, at referendum or in some other way, this so we’ve got an unwanted sovereignty. We were constantly talking about it and did nothing to obtain it, namely we were engaged in it in a very perfidious way. Montenegro brought the decision about Serbia’s sovereignty.
At one time, I suggested that we should form a committee for independence of Montenegro but nobody listened to me, but well, the events were leading to it. But you see, the problem with this assertion is that you cannot define the constitutional principles on the principle of accidental. None selects nation in which to be born. If we were born as Serbian, Hungarians, Chinese, Martians or whatever, this would be accidental, not dependable on our will but you can not define the state on the principle of accidental. Now, why do people form states? The answer to this question is thousands years old and still unchanged. From the ancient Greece onward people form states in order to have a good life. And what is a good life? Probably such in which your human rights are respected and not violated.
Now, if you begin with human rights, there is no point of putting on instantly a ‘šajkača’/Serbian cap/ and ‘opanak’/peasant shoes/, you don’t have to divide citizens to Serbs and no-Serbs. The state, hence, belongs to citizens, regardless if they are the Serbs, the Hungarians, big, small, thin, fat, beautiful, ugly, men, women, homosexual, heterosexual or whatever special definition you use. Hence, it is very important that some key documents of society, documents that, let’s say, constitute community don’t bring into question cohesion of the ethno-cultural-pluralistic community.
As the name of this seminar “Reporting on Vojvodina” the question arises whether reporting contributes to this cohesion or not. At the beginning I said that I don’t follow all media and that it is my impression, mind you an impression, that Vojvodina is not present as much as it should be in the media and now I shall try to support this impression with some data obtained through monitoring carried out by Novi Sad School of Journalism in the period September 2006 – January 2007, in relation to transformation of TV Vojvodina and subsequently published in a book, so I shall now present only part of results from this research published in the book. Well, according to research carried out by Novi Sad School of Journalism, TV Vojvodina covers more events in the world than what is going on in Vojvodina. Thus, it informs more its audience about events occurring in the international community, no matter how it is defined, than about things going on in Vojvodina. TV Vojvodina, apart from this, reports more about other parts of Serbia than about Vojvodina.
TV Vojvodina offers more information connected with Belgrade than with Novi Sad. Information about activities of the government bodies i.e. the republic central bodies are much more presented by TV Vojvodina than are information dealing with the activities of the province’s bodies. Not to mention that TV Vojvodina totally ignores and marginalizes the activities of citizens, their associations and NGO-s in Vojvodina. This is an absolutely neglected theme. And now, when you have these data, it leads one to ask an ordinary, simple and logical question – why is there the Radio Diffusion Service, why is there Radio Television Vojvodina if not to report about things that happen in Vojvodina, which is its primary objective. However, besides this objective TV Vojvodina has also a task to provide the media coverage of all differences that exist in Vojvodina which are, as you know, not only political, not only social, not only economic but also ethnical and cultural. So, these differences should have the media coverage, but the problem is that, as in the first case, TV Vojvodina fails in this task, because the theme of multiculturalism on the programs broadcast by the Radio Television Vojvodina is poorly presented. I shall mention only some figures, I wouldn’t burden you with figures, but mind you, in all news, and news in the monitored period covered 775 themes – of these 775 themes, the theme of multiculturalism was presented only in nine cases i.e. nine times. These are data related to television. When we speak about radio, only six times of in total 738 themes, only six times. On programs broadcast by the Radio Television Serbia dominate solely the subjects of Serbian nationality, hence it is all about their activities. And what one expects when there is one pluralistic society as in Vojvodina it is the sufficient amount of programs about inter-ethnical tolerance. However, this theme is totally neglected. I recently met Dubravka Valić Nedeljković who works at the Novi Sad School of Journalism and she told me that after the results of research were published a small step forward was observed on TV Novi Sad i.e. Vojvodina, because now it pays more attention to these themes.
But mind you, apart from this, the Novi Sad School of Journalism in the recent years carried out some other researches and these researches also confirm what I have already told you, but here more attention was paid to print media, like “Magyar Szóu”, “Hlas L’udu”, “Libertatei”, “Hrvatska Riječ” /Croation Word/, I think that of other media in Serbian the only one monitored was daily “Vojvodina”, which is not published any more. It was noticed that all media, including both the Serbian and the media in minority languages, were closed within their own ethnical group, that they had no interest for things happening outside, for instance the Slovakian media had no interest for things going on in the Hungarian community, the Croats or some other even if occasionally reported on such events this was mostly of a manifest character i.e. the media coverage of some important manifestation, or it was about some incidents, but there were no any systematic, serious, comprehensive, analytical approaches. When we speak, let’s say about the media in Serbian, you have no journalists who are specialized to cover either the topic of multiculturalism or the topic of minorities, who have documentation, who are specialized for such issues. So, editorial policies reproduce that kind of multiculturalism that at the beginning I named as being segregative or as some call it the cooperative multiculturalism, within which different ethnical groups exist one next to other, it is insisted on their equality, but they are not too open for various forms of cooperation or communication. This means, then, that we are faced with segmentation and fragmentation of the public along their ethnical seams or applying ethnical criteria that don’t contribute to cohesion of Vojvodina as the pluralistic community nor in sensitizing the public to these ethnical differences nor encouraging them to adopt some of them.
Agency Scan carried several years ago a research and found that only one in ten secondary school pupils in Vojvodina expressed any interest for culture of their co-citizens of another nationality, I repeat only one in ten. Politicians often say that multiculturalism is Vojvodina’s advantage, value, wealth, but I don’t know any high positioned politician in Vojvodina, with exception of Pajtić, who speaks a language of any minority. I only know that Pajtić speaks Hungarian, but I don’t know for any other, if they speak any and, as they insist that multiculturalism is a sort of symbolical asset, perhaps it would be useful to carry out a research and bring them to a sort of competition as is broadcast by TV Novi Sad and then to see how much they know about culture of their co-citizens of different nationality.
And now, what would be necessary to do in order to increase this cohesion? Naturally, a different model of information, different cultural and political model, actually some open concept of the media that would be double-open – open, let’s say, in relation to other ethnical communities and also open to pluralism within its own community. Nationalists often have that myth and stereotype that all others are homogenous but only the Serbs are disunited, divided, antagonized, whilst all others act in unity, but this is not true at all. However, it would be good if, let’s say, TV Vojvodina has the media coverage of all this pluralism that exists within minority communities, their different orientations, options, different regional interests existing within minority communities. As, you see, these segments would then tend more to establish an inter-ethnical cooperation and overcome these ethnical boundaries than it is in one differently formatted reality. Naturally, to an improved cohesion can also contribute this higher level of cooperation between news offices, joint programs or introducing subtitles – the driver who took me here told me that on Super TV in Subotica they have subtitles so when somebody speaks for example Hungarian, his maternal language, there runs subtitle and vice versa, which is very good and it is simply hard to believe that TV Vojvodina has not such a good thing, for a rather long time. This is certainly something one would normally expect … Well, I do occasionally watch TV Vojvodina, not because I want to or have some interest for it, I mean there are much more interesting media, but when the Helsinki Committee organizes something in Novi Sad, and the Hungarian TV and Hungarian newspapers have the media coverage of it, I am quite interested how they will present everything in their program if they decide to report on it at all, but mind you, I can only watch pictures but I understand nothing.
To me, therefore, as someone who partakes in all that, it is very interesting to see how they comment and how they report about the event they cover as journalists. Naturally, the editorial policies should be changed but these editorial policies only reproduce what is going on within the sphere of global society and in the sphere of global politics. If programs in Serbian don’t broadcast reports about events in the minority communities this can mean only two things – either these events are not interesting nor relevant and thus not covered or they, regardless if they are interesting, important, relevant and so on, are being ignored. Then this means that minorities, that their existence is tolerated, that a sort of formal-legal equality is granted to them, that they also have information in their maternal language, but that essentially they are not accepted. Because, statistically, you have a large number of the media in minority languages, but in respect of their contents there is no any inter-cultural comprehensive approach. On the other side, minorities then don’t accept values of ethnical majority, they are closed within their own frames, within their own limits and they step across them only in the measure in which it is necessary in order to prove, to dispel doubts about their loyalty. You see, researches carried out in Serbia, often show that members of ethnical majority distrust the loyalty of minorities and usually, topping this list are the Albanians, then follow the Croats, the Bosnians and all others.
In research carried out by the Novi Sad School of Journalism there is another fascinating data and this is what a colleague here has already mentioned – namely when one turns TV on, the first five reports are about Kosovo. Hence, some minority news-offices and programs in the minority languages are more reporting on the theme of Kosovo than the programs in Serbian language do. For instance, the news programs in Slovakian, Romanian and Ruthenian languages are dealing more with the issue of Kosovo then those in the Serbian language. This is very wrong way to prove loyalty. Actually, here we deal with minorities’ fear that they may be exposed to repression and violence if Kosovo becomes independent i.e. if the issue of Kosovo is resolved differently than the Serbian political elite advocates.
Now, can we have a different model of multiculturalism then we have currently? Certainly, these two models I have mentioned, they are pure, ideal models and you can hardly assume that they are fully realized in reality, but they are interesting, they have that hermeneutical value of being used at, let’s say, this kind of meetings. Is it possible to have a different model of multiculturalism? I think that it is not possible. That sort of segregation … when you have in mind that we were in war, that we were under sanctions, that country collapsed economically, that the issue of state borders is open, that process of that primary political constituting is not completed, that political actors constantly discuss whether to respect the Constitution or not, always with reference to Kosovo, if you have in mind that some vital institutions for protection of human rights have not been established, then hardly that you can have a different kind of multiculturalism than one we have now. Of course, this is a very poor model of multiculturalism, but at this moment it appears that we not capable for something else and something better. Perhaps we shall get this for some ten or 20 years.

Transcript of the speech delivered at the seminar “Reporting On Vojvodina” in organization of the Independent Journalists’ Association of Vojvodina. The seminar was organized in Hotel Božić, in Beška, on December 21st, 22nd and 23rd, 2007, with support of the National Endowment for Democracy Fund.

Pavel Domonji is the head of the Novi Sad Office of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights

Let’s straight away, from the beginning, demystify one thing – well … our kind organizers included approximately this theme for my lecture, expecting of me to, in the meantime, slightly reduce and make the theme more precise but, being engaged in all sort of different things, I haven’t done it, so that it is still “Cultural Identity of Vojvodina”. I hold that it would be the best for this discussion – because I insist on discussion as I am not a professor, not a lecturer, I don’t plan to make this speech too long because I am not a man of theory but a man of practice – to wit, I think that it should be understood, before all, in the context of what seems to me a rather great problem when we speak about the issue of reporting on Vojvodina, when it is the issue of writing and, if you want, also a perception of Vojvodina, and this even relates to Vojvodina itself, to wit, when it is the issue of Vojvodina’s media, let alone when it is the issue of the media reporting on Vojvodina from, so to say, outside. Of course, in the case of this country, I think primarily about the so-called capital’s media, Belgrade’s media, which frequently write about Vojvodina obviously not knowing any or almost any facts and nothing about the complex structure, what Vojvodina means at all – to them Vojvodina means let’s say this: goulash, paprikash/stew, tamburitza players, drawl and here just about it ends … and no landscape, of course, as highlanders and those from the mountainous regions would say. Now, have we at all, as people working in more or less some of Vojvodina’s media, have we done enough not to be so and do we understand, to paraphrase Raymond Carver, what we are speaking about when we speak about Vojvodina. Hence, there is a sort of, how to put it, a sort of stereotype – not that stereotypes should necessary have a negative determinant, they can have a positive one as well – there is a sort of stereotype about Vojvodina that is more or less generally adopted and is also dominant in some media reports on Vojvodina, in perception of Vojvodina and perception of the situation in Vojvodina. It amounts to the notion that there, in Vojvodina, we have a sort of multiculturalism for which we are not exactly certain what it is about and how it is expressed, but we do know that it is somewhere there and that it is being mentioned. There is a specific style of life that somewhat differs from the style of life in other parts of the country and there is, due to it, also a specific political and social scene, which is somehow more complicated than one we have in the rest of country; apart from all these factors that can be found everywhere, there are also some specific, regional, minority political subjects, from political parties via non-government organizations, civic associations etc, and there are, of course, the media in the minority languages as well as the regional media that, in a degree, contribute to the complexity of this picture. However, I wouldn’t say, as I follow very carefully the reports on these particularities, I wouldn’t say that we understand very much what is actually going on. You’ll often hear – I quote the example, you see, because to me it was a particularly characteristic one – some two or three years ago, when the attention was increased due to some inter-ethnical incidents, especially at north of Vojvodina, and then something was kicked off, some big story, you remember, there was a lot about internationalization of the issue and then it created a great stir in Belgrade, and then a very prominent Belgrade’s weekly brought a report from Subotica and the surroundings.
I read that article and I was absolutely fascinated that the journalist who wrote it didn’t managed even to write correctly one single name of people she had spoken to, neither she wrote correctly a single name of villages she mentioned, she got it all wrong and absolutely, at the most elemental factual level, her article was scandalous. And I repeat, this article wasn’t published in a tabloid but in a renowned weekly. It is not exception at all. This is the consequence of what? It is easy to say – well this is the consequence of that, I think, arrogance of the capital city, etc. Of course it is also that but, on the other side, it seems that Vojvodina itself hasn’t sufficiently … the people working in the media, as well as some intellectuals, if you want, the infrastructure of Vojvodina, the academic structure, hasn’t sufficiently, you see, forced on a more complex, more intricate story on what is Vojvodina, why in Vojvodina some things are so essential and so oversensitive, why some things cannot be done in a certain way as, I don’t know, are done in Kragujevac. Actually here, one can say, the story is being reduced to what the media at all serve from here, what passes through a filter of sort and enters one grey media picture. Actually it can be said that everything is restricted to the most elemental factual reporting.
Thus, Belgrade’s media have their correspondents in Novi Sad and other greater cities, who report that, I don’t know, here or there happened this and that, that here and there happen that or this. However, this is treated as a sort of almost, how to say, communal matters, there is no any serious approach, it is not treated as something that somebody from here will seriously consider, write serious analytical texts and make television or radio reports about but it is exclusively restricted to the level of report and if it is necessary to do something on a broader level we shall then send someone from Belgrade who, as I said, generally has no idea where he/she has arrived nor whom to talk with, nor he/she can in two minutes understand some things. It is like it was, you remember, during the last wars, when our people frequently complained – ‘how it is possible, someone comes from the other side of the world and now he/she will in a week gather up all threads; he/she doesn’t understand this, and hasn’t taken this into consideration’ – this same thing happens to us, the same things happen when you try, when looking from some macro-plan down to a micro-environment, at its specific problems, and actually, in the best case, even if you have the best possible intentions, all you can manage is just to scratch surface and do something that will be, so to say, perhaps a sensation for two or three days, and will not actually go further form that. We have there an enormous problem. Here, simply as someone who follows all these media, I can say that, if I now, for instance, isolate and for a month monitor, collect, systematize only texts brought by Belgrade’s media about some specific political, social and other problems, phenomena, challenges etc. present in Vojvodina’s society, I might say about these texts that they are: 1) very rare , b) very bad, very superficial, and c) very common, but very wrong and even, in some media, also intentionally bad intoned.
Now, why has it come to this that Vojvodina itself (of course I speak about Vojvodina’s media), why has it come that Vojvodina cannot actually create a picture about itself that will be dominant in Vojvodina itself let alone to penetrate outside it. What I want to say is that I have impression that the majority of citizens in Vojvodina, when they want to get information about what’s going on they primarily turn to some Belgrade’s televisions and read some Belgrade’s newspapers; only if it is the issue of something really local, something how to say, of communal nature, you see, then they will turn to the media here, somewhere in their surroundings. How has it happened that Vojvodina, in other words, has become in the sense of the media coverage and not only the media, the second-rate province? And has it been necessary, could it have been different? And can it still be different at all? It looks to me that this is, among other things, on one side the result of the nature of this society. Serbia is, at least from the end of the eighties, a distinctly centralized society. Centralized in a way you can hardly find anywhere else in Europe. It is really a phenomenon. You know very well that even a local self-ruling community cannot buy two ball-point pens without obtaining a sort of written approval from some ministry from Belgrade. Hence, this is, on one side, a result of this centralization and the centralization of power and the centralization of power is also centralization of money, of resources of every possible nature. On the other side, I think that it is, somehow, the consequence of a sort of lack of ambition and also of Vojvodina’s media scene. Hence, it looks somehow … as if it has agreed to this subordinate position, to be a sort of service to the so-called big media or, if making some media of its own, it as if agree that these media actually will cover, let’s say, very … that their coverage is of a very short range in the geographic sense, in the sense of circulation, in whatever sense you want, that their coverage doesn’t go beyond limits of local newspapers or, in the best case, of its regional boundaries. So, I might say that there is just one – I cannot remember any other – that there is just one single exception in this sense and this is an absolute paradox – the media empire of Robert Čoban – hence a man who makes hyper-commercial, show business etc. newspapers for which I, personally, have absolutely no any interest and which I don’t like to read, I mean it’s a totally another world. What I want to say is that he launched his market expansion not with intent to be the first in Novi Sad but to win the Serbian market and in this he has succeeded in a great measure. His editions, a billion of them I’d say, I don’t know, are actually very … he takes a very important part of the market cake of the whole Republic of Serbia and really also of some ex-Yu surroundings in such a measure that it proves that such things don’t need to be produced only in Belgrade, that such things can be as well made in Novi Sad or wherever. Hence what it is necessary is to dare, it is necessary, of course, to have certain human, financial and I don’t know which resources or, in this or that way, simply create them, you see, and this is one of ways. It means that one can learn even from someone you wouldn’t perhaps expect to learn from and from such people one can learn something. To me, somehow, it looks that the main problem is that actually, when you are in the groove (and this groove lasts 15 – 20 years) you will hardly manage to get out of this, quite hardly. I tell you, you cannot expect to understand what is the complexity and particularity of Vojvodina if nothing is being written, reported, analyzed etc. about it in the way that will be competent, serious, based on a serious approach to the facts and at the same time as well as at grassroots, at an insider level so to say, hence to come from here but to write about local problems in the way that will be clear to everyone able to follow a more complex text. This is amazingly rare in all media including also Novi Sad’s media, I insist on this. It is interesting that you will be often forced to turn to know more about things that happen here and are of concern to everyone here, that you will find more extensive and, if perhaps not sufficiently good, still more ambitious texts in some Belgrade’s dailies for instance or, at least, the regional editions of Belgrade’s newspapers, than you will be informed by newspapers, magazines, radio stations, television stations in Novi Sad and in other cities in Vojvodina …
On the other side, it looks to me that we, perhaps, in difference to some (past) time that I, somehow, remember from time when I was a kid (they, sure, had some other limitations, before all ideological, not at all naïve limitations, we should not be misled regarding it), it seems to me that the great problem here is that we have here a unique fragmentation of Vojvodina. This, among other things, means also an ethnical fragmentation of the picture about Vojvodina. One picture has the so-called majority within Vojvodina, another picture has the majority outside Vojvodina, the third picture and then the fourth, the fifth, the tenth, are the pictures that have minorities, ethnical, linguistic, before all these two, each within its own circle that makes some own words, some own meanings that survive only within that same circle and don’t penetrate at all outside it. What ‘fascinates’ me, quotation marks mind, which means in the negative sense, as from the nineties on, how is it possible that, let’s say, nobody has thought about or that nobody has done anything serious since the nineties, when, let’s say, there was, I don’t know … Magyar Szó was then, given the circumstances, a very liberal newspapers, I think much more liberal than the Province’s newspapers in the Serbian language – and there was time of these ethnical tensions because, as a matter of fact, then when ruled a sort of that Serbian nationalism as the dominant ideological woof of Milošević’s regime – how is it possible that nobody got the idea to, for example, make a sort of weekly digest of Magyar Szó in Serbian language that would simply, to avoid ‘dead telephones’, which would present in words of these same Vojvodina’s Hungarian journalists, intellectuals, writers, scientists, what we would call, well, academicians, the problems of Vojvodina’s Hungarian society in the Serbian language, hence in the language which is a sort of lingua franca in this part of the world (simply, regardless if we want it or not, this is so). No! Simply, everyone was closed within its own world of a sort, in this world they produced certain meanings but didn’t feel any need or didn’t see any way how to talk about it, to get out from some imaginary boundaries and to establish a sort of dialogue with others.
In this way we actually come to the fact that what we call the identity of Vojvodina is essentially fragmentized. We come to emergence of something that everybody will principally disapprove of and say that it is not good – to the phenomenon of parallel societies, to the phenomenon of some parallel co-existence, in which people … everyone will know only own language, everyone will go only to their cafes, everyone will visit only their own concerts or theater performances, simply, people will not live together but each in their own ghetto. If this happens, and we are well on the road to this, then it is senseless to speak afterwards about Vojvodina’s identity, then there is no identity of Vojvodina, it simply doesn’t exist – then there are some identities that actually don’t brush or touch, somewhere they pass one by another, they somehow co-exist in a way; here, it is nice there is no any brush in some ugly sense, that there is no any skirmish, but actually there is no any inter-communication and let alone, God forbid!, some influence and something that they may be accepting one from another, something they alone lack (because you know, you can never have everything, always someone else knows, sees, feels, understands something that you are simply not given and what you can learn from another, simply to enter one world that hitherto has not been sufficiently known to you). I think that it is now, let’s say, a great danger that this kind of Vojvodina’s identity actually somewhere … well now, to make it clear, naturally that this doesn’t mean that everything with an ethnical sign automatically endangers Vojvodina’s identity. Vojvodina’s identity is not an abstract, how to say, non-ethnical category that exists in a vacuum, in a void, outside of everything else. Of course it doesn’t! Moreover, I personally oppose this assertion because it makes the job of nationalists easier, because then nationalists will say: – Now do you say that I must be of a Vojvodina nationality, it means I mustn’t be a Serb, I mustn’t be a Hungarian, I mustn’t be a Slovakian! – certainly I will not say that! Certainly not! And certainly the fact that someone’s ethnicity, the fact that someone speaks his own language, that someone wants to advance and be what is something specific within one-language culture or within one distinct tradition – all these, as such, is nothing disputable at all. It becomes disputable in the moment when it is make absolute and becomes the reason, justification, excuse or call it what you want, for a sort of an implicit or explicit separation from another or, even, which happens in the case of certain nationalist aspirations of the majority, that it becomes a pretext to a sort of suppressing and ghettoizing of every minority culture – that it, just being minority, should be fully marginalized or even suspected, that it would be the best not to have them at all, isn’t it, and if only we all speak the Serbian “so that the whole world can understand us”. It means that these are all the natural consequences, as we actually, somewhere, it looks to me, have allowed that tendency, present since the end of the eighties, to win. Actually, it has been since the beginning one tendency to show that this complex identity of Vojvodina as such – this is not a phrase though many times we repeat it as a phrase – hence, this that makes Vojvodina so rich, to show it as a problem, to show it as something that makes life of people difficult, something that complicates life of people, something that … you know, that evil seed absolutely amazes me, to what measure it can go. Probably at least some of you know that there is a band in Subotica performing a song “Teshik” – and now, the boy, the band’s frontman, explains, now it is, you see, the problem that sellers first say: “teshik” (Slovakian) and then “please” (Serbian). All my life I go to Subotica and I have never realized that this is a problem. However, if you wish something to be a problem, you will always find the most incredible reason to find a problem, even that someone says, God forbid!: “teshik, please”. I want to say, these things are those holes, this is, when you have once allowed this sort of intentionally generated over-sensibility, this sort of an intentionally generated feeling of being endangered in a way – and as the minority can be endangered so can be the majority … (hence you can easily persuade the majority community that it is endangered, it is like being endangered as a white in America, this also happens, these are typical racist theses – white men are endangered by blacks, Latin Americans, emigrants) – hence, you don’t necessary belong to minority to make someone in your community to promote the idea of being endangered, not to speak about the most drastic examples: you had, you see, Hitlerism, which emerged because the Germans were endangered in Germany, hence the Germans that made 90 percent or I don’t know what percent of population in Germany, and now they were endangered by, I don’t know, several hundred thousands Jews… Hence, no limit here, the sky is limit.
It seems to me that, and with this I more or less finish what I think is necessary to say as a sort of introduction, it seems to me that – I insist, before all, on the media scene because I am a media man and you are the media people – we can speak in thousands ways about Vojvodina’s identity, but I think that what you are mostly interested for is primarily – that we, ourselves, have failed, somewhere, and that we, ourselves, often don’t understand what is happening to us and don’t perceive it in the serious way. If we don’t perceive and if we do perceive but don’t know, don’t want or cannot put it down on paper, present it before cameras or microphones, we cannot then expect from the public that consumes these media, as Vojvodina’s so the broader public, nor we can expect from political elites nor anyone else to understand what we alone either don’t understand or don’t feel needed to be treated in an adequate way, or to show that to people that listen to, watch or read what we do. So, this is all from me for this introduction, and please feels free to ask me, to say, to notice, to discuss or whatever you want to. So ask, please.

Question (attendee): I have one question. I am interested what do you think about the impact of migrations during the nineties from Krajina etc, in what measure this has caused the change of identity of Vojvodina and influences today’s situation?

(T. Pančić): Certainly, its influence is great. When we speak about this, there are two approaches which are, in my opinion, very dangerous and should be avoided. One is to deny it and say: – No way, it has no any impact, not at all, this hasn’t happened, nonsense. This means closing your eyes before reality. Nowhere, not in any country, you cannot expect a huge percent of people, compared with the total number of inhabitants, leaves and another people come, and this not to be reflected on the picture of that society, on a cultural map of one space. Another danger is to recognize it but make it absolute in a negative way that would lead you to a sort of racism, treating all people who have arrived from somewhere as a sort of… we here, the natives, we are wonderful, beautiful, phenomenal and these newcomers are evil, wild, repulsive, hordes, they make us primitive, they now, see, pollute our cities, all of them are fascists … Naturally that this approach is, put it mildly, wrong. Simply, this issue should be realistically appraised. The fact is that in this space of Vojvodina a huge number of people have moved in who are, to put it mildly, very frustrated whether by their own experiences or … people came from the war caught regions or regions that in this or that way were caught in it and felt the consequences of wars in the nineties. Now, another thing is whether they have and how much they participated in that, how much they, as citizens, are simply co-responsible for that – because, you know, if there breaks out a civil war in one country, the citizens of that country can not be absolved from responsibility. I think, the civil war is the war of citizens, isn’t it? But, let’s put it aside for the moment. So it is the fact that a huge mass of people have arrived, enraged, frustrated etc. people who have, if nothing else, some war biography as a sort of excuse: – See, I suffered, I was … so here I will vent my fury on somebody, what one has to teach me in this way, what in that way, now I’m going to enter somebody’s house, they took my house, etc. This is the problem that nobody here wants to confront; it is simply not politically correct to speak about it. Not politically correct! It is something that is almost not spoken about, because people are frightened – I say, they fear with reason this other extreme, to show towards these people a sort of, so to say, racist, chauvinist attitude – but they exaggerate in this justified fear and just keep their eyes shut. Of course this is the problem and this is problem everywhere in the world. And this sort of, I would say, quasi-leftist closing of eyes before the problem sooner or later comes for payment. I will give you a simple example from the so-called great world, from the West: For a long time, first of all some liberal and democratic leftists at the West were closing their eyes before the phenomenon i.e. to the western metropolises arrived very many people from, let’s say, the countries in which dominates a sort of Islamic fundamentalism and who were, simply, in the cultural sense, not ready, even were very hostile towards what today is accepted at the West as normal, starting from the fact that women live free, that they don’t need to ask permit from their father or brother to marry, to go out, that they can dress as they like, that they can have fun, drink alcohol, to, I don’t know, gay population and everything else, which is from their perspective something absolutely unacceptable. So, for a long time it was something that was not spoken about because, if you would mention facts like that, you were immediately called a racist, someone with anti-Islamic feelings, which is simply nonsense. And in this way this topic was served on the plate to rightists, the extreme Right because only the extreme Right was speaking about these clashes, clashes that are, simply, cultural. These are not clashes because someone is black, white, brown, these clashes are cultural, these are clashes between the worlds, which would erupt even in the case that the process went vice versa. Just imagine a million Englishmen settling in Pakistan! Or in Serbia, after all! Don’t tell me that there wouldn’t be that sort of clashes between the worlds! So, nothing could be heard about this and then suddenly, when all the mess had started, then September 11th, then the murder in Holland, etc. then people realized suddenly that something was wrong there, and then, not ready for it, often resorted to other extremes and began looking on all Moslems as potential terrorists, as if every Arab or a Pakistani only dreams about blowing off to pieces the Tower Bridge – and all this actually because they had not been prepared in a normal, rational way that cultural legacy is the essential part of someone’s identity and that when one comes to live in a different world, absolutely in a different way from one taught all life before that, then this had to be in some way overcome, so to say, simply a man should be given the opportunity to understand that there, in the country he had come to live, that there are some other rules are respected. This doesn’t mean that we should say: – You’re backward, bloody savage who now must learn how to live. This only has counter-effect, this is simply not fair. But one should say: – Sorry, this is England, this is not Pakistan, here we have different rules and you are welcome to live as you think you should, but you have to understand that other people, starting from your own daughter to some stranger you see in the street, are not obliged, not in this society, they are not obliged to follow your views, but live as they wish. I think that such thing – to return to our subject – I think that such thing is very important here as well. Hence, you respect everyone’s frustration, you respect everyone’s pain, you respect everyone’s resentment, but, sorry, this is Vojvodina. Here we speak, in the street, at market, in buses, wherever one wants, we speak here the Serbian, and the Slovakian, and the Romany, and the Hungarian and so on, and there is none who wants to live in Vojvodina and who is, how to say, authorized not to acknowledge this rule of an elemental civilized living in an environment as this is.
We must, you know, especially when this is the issue, we must understand that people often have no such kind of experience because, regardless of the fact that people, for instance, often come from some regions which are also multi-ethnical, multi-confessional, as it is, let’s say, Bosnia and Herzegovina, that it is not multi-lingual and that they, for example, are not used to it. Now the question is – will Vojvodina cease to be multilingual for the sake of them or they will get used to this fact. I think that the second is much better, isn’t it? Simply, society must first acknowledge this problem, must admit it to itself, without hysterics, without instigating intolerance on any side, but must first admit it to itself. And we here don’t acknowledge this problem because we are burdened with ethno-principle: as, this is Serbia, and as they are Serbs, then no problem, then everything is all right. Well, it is not right! Because, it is different when a Pakistani comes to England, it is other state and other ethos… So no, I don’t think it is right. It is not right because people all come from, they can be hundred times Serbs, but they come from another context, from one (in a measure, not fully, of course) different cultural woof and some things simply should be overcome in this or that way.
After all, mind, this doesn’t happen for the first time in Vojvodina. We know that there was colonization also after the First and the Second World Wars, many of us are descendents of these colonizers, but it was always somehow pushed under the carpet. You know what is the consequence of these pushing under the carpet? The consequence is that as I know, let’s say, that in the village in which my father grew up, and in which there were, to say, one half of the Serbs were natives and another half of the Serbs were newcomers, meaning both are the Serbs and, it means, there is no any ethnical clashes, but in that village, even today, 50 years later, there is a silent division (it is not now, I don’t know, at what level, but even today there is a sort of silent division): today every local inhabitant knows which is a native’s house and which colonist’s, so it means after 50-60 years; generations grew that don’t remember at all that old homeland of their parents, but even today it is known who is who. And this is just the consequence of the problems that were officially declared as being non-existent.

Question (attendee): I would like to speak about “News” in the Ruthenian, on the second channel, which is identical with “News” in Serbian. Then the broadcasting of such news is quite unnecessary. They don’t cover the Ruthenian ethnic community at all. Of printed media, “Ruske Slovo” has topics that are of interest only for pensioners, though it is intended for all.

Teofil: Yes, it is always so with us, among other things it is the problem of a sort of quality. Simply, Ruski Krstur is larger town, practically exclusively Ruthenian, it is a sort of center and there … it is the same as with, for example, the Hungarians in Novi Sad and Hungarians in Kanjiža … A Hungarian who lives in Novi Sad is simply surrounded with other nationalities you see, how to say, because the majority of inhabitants of Novi Sad are not Hungarians, and a Hungarian who lives in Kanjiža is in surroundings that are Hungarian, will have no so much contact with, with … its is something that is simple in itself, one naturally given circumstance in micro-environment and it doesn’t need to be negative, nothing has to be disputable.

Comment (attendee): But it is question of a closed community!

Teofil: So I say, it is a sort of, it is also a phenomenon that is not specific only for our regions, which is a sort of self-closure of minority communities that, in one moment, simply imitate this principle of the majority. And as the majority is closing itself into some exclusive limits, thus they too, due to a sort of feeling, perhaps, that their identity is more at target, by being a minority, they attempt in a way to close themselves into their own world.
And regarding your examples of the media in the Ruthenian language, it is here a great problem. Before all, to make it clear, the same is with the media in the Serbian language – they publish the agency news, then these published news become broadcast news on the state television, then these broadcast TV news are again published and at the end we are in a closed circle. This is the easiest, isn’t it … and when you have all this published and broadcast in other languages, then really we have an objective question whether journalists who work there (because journalist is the one to make news and it is not one who knows how to transmit them) or there are only some technical staff like … translators, you know – translating news from the Serbian into Ruthenian and let it be published or broadcast. If so, let’s define it so and to say that we don’t need programs in minority languages, except in that elemental-technical sense.

Question (attendee): I would like to keep on these problems. There (Ruski Krstur) I went to school for four years and what I noticed was that some people would not have, that they refused, to learn Serbian. OK: speak in your house free as you want to, and in your village speak as you wan to, but how will you, when you enroll in faculty where there are no Ruthenians, for example, to study chemistry? Similar happens in Subotica. Some people, especially youth and especially elderly people refuse, they don’t want to learn language. (Teofil asks her which language but the Serbian she speaks and she says the Ruthenian). OK, they don’t want to speak it, but should know it.

Teofil: Actually, this is the question of understanding some our values, elemental values. You said – and it is actually the key of discussion – the Serbian language is the official language and what one has to do there … The Serbian language is the official at the level of state. At the level of Subotica, the official language is the Hungarian. Thus, if you look for a job in Leskovac, nobody would ask you if you speak Hungarian, but you don’t look for a job in Leskovac, but you look for it in Subotica. It means, pardon me, it is the same as you don’t need to know Serbian if you look for a job in Krakow, because in Krakow, simply, there is no reason at all to know Serbian. However, in Belgrade for example, you must know Serbian, and it would be expected that in Subotica you speak both the Serbian and the Hungarian because it is something … approximately a half of inhabitants speaks Serbian or Croatian and a half speaks the Hungarian and it is quite logical that, if your job is to work directly with people, with customers, simply communicate with people – because I don’t believe you would be asked what language you speak if you arrange some elements for a sort of plaything – but if your job assumes a direct communication with people, it is an elemental, if nothing else, economic interest, it is not the matter of some high politics – hence, economic interest of employer, whether it is the state, the local self-management or if it is a private employer working I don’t know what, it doesn’t make difference. The elemental interest of the employer is that his or her worker speaks both languages not only official ones but spoken in the certain area. You may think that you are discriminated when somebody requires from you to know one language, it is only the consequence that you haven’t clarified these notions but simply starting from this – I live in the state of Serbia and as I live in the state of Serbia, the knowledge of Serbian language will suffice it!

Transcript of speech/discussion from the seminar “Reporting On Vojvodina” organized by the Independent Journalists’ Association in Vojvodina. The seminar was held in Hotel Božić, in Beška, December 21st, 22nd and 23rd, 2007, with support of the National Endowment for Democracy Foundation.

Teofil Pančić is journalist and a writer, the columnist of the Vreme Weekly.

THOSE A BIT MORE INFORMED COULD FORESEE AT LEAST THREE MORE IMPORTANT POINTS:
First, this is the matter of a direct agreement therefore the sale not allowing participation of the greater number of interested buyers and this all for price several times below all prices so far mentioned i.e. for Euro 400,000,000, plus investments in the amount of Euro 500,000,000 in the next five years.
Secondly, the object of sale is total property including the entire Serbian market and monopole that NIS holds on this market. This means all together – from the total production of oil and gas, refineries, more than 500 oil stations to the underground gas reservoir at Banatski Dvor and other vast property both stationary and removable.
Third, this price and the model of “selling” are conditioned by political reasons. As Minister Bubalo says, the Government takes into account the “geo-strategic” reasons. Prior to any comment, one has to understand what at this moment makes our national oil company and what its value amount to on the objective world market.
Let’s take, for sake of reference, only three comparisons. Let’s start with the book value of NIS’ property amounting to about $ 1,400,000,000 (ca Euro 950,000,000), as an independent auditorial house has repeatedly confirmed. At the first glance it is clear that the price offered is more than twice lower that is the sheer book value of the company. And we know on the basis of our experience from already finished auction and bid sales, far less attractive firms here reached-were sold for price far above their book values. What’s more, if we take the value of just one year of oil extraction on the fields of Vojvodina, which amounts to some more than 650,000 tons (about 4,000,000 barrels) at minimal expected price of $ 100 per barrel, we come to the amount of $ 400,000,000. When we add to this the gas production of about 250,000,000 cubic meters annually, it is evident that the offered price for our entire national oil company is lower than is the value of raw oil and gas pumped free of charge from Vojvodina’s fields only during one year!!!
Or, let’s make another comparison. The management of the company and the Government announced that the Company’s annual balance sheet will show the profit of RSD 9,000,000,000 i.e. about Euro 112,500,000.
This means that the offered price for our whole national oil company is at the level lower than is its four-year expected profit???
On the other side, in contrast to these arguments, on other pan of the scale are foggily expressed political and geo-strategic reasons. Even those informed can list nothing more than passing a “branch” of gas pipeline South Pipeline through Serbia and the political friendship with Russia. As regards gas pipeline, what is offered is just a “branch” with the maximum range to Bosnia and Herzegovina, while the main gas pipeline passes through Bulgaria. All potential “benefits” from this passing “branch” cannot compensate this low offered price for the whole Company.
As regards Russian friendship it has never been, at least when we speak about prices of energy commodities which we import from them, clearly confirmed, because we have been paying the same or even higher price than other European countries. For instance, Germany pays gas up to 20 percent less than we pay for it because it orders larger qualities and pays more regular than we do. Therefore, with our Russians friends there is in effect for quite a time the rule that we are brothers, but our “purses” are not sisters.
Finally, if we even abandon all aforementioned, there remains a question for Minister Dinkić and the Government whose member he is. Does the promise of about Euro 1,000 value of free shares per head of adult citizen of our country from the sale of public companies equal to “fools rejoice at promises”? Because, even economic amateurs are aware that thus promised value of free shares and thus offered price for NIS cannot go together …

Text was published in the Danas Daily on January 21st, 2008.
The author was the President of the NIS Managing Board from 2002 to 2004.