Milosevic (28 page)

On the rare occasions when a minister disagreed with the boss, Milosevic would speak to the errant official privately. The Serbian leader often used the technique of the silent reply to keep his aides off-balance, recalled Mitevic. ‘You could tell him something and he would not say one word. You could have a meeting with him, and he would not tell you anything about his opinion. So when you left, you were wondering if you had said the right thing, or the wrong one. But he would think about what you said and then maybe use it himself, later.'

Visitors to the presidential palace during Milosevic's rule recall, most of all, the silence. There were security checks to enter the building, but once inside there was none of the buzz and hubbub that usually surrounds heads of state. No telephones rang, no aides rushed in and out, no advisers presented draft papers on pressing matters of state. There was only Milosevic, and a single female secretary. The spirit of Ottoman autocracy lived on. Occasional visitors were received in the presidential palace's massive reception room. With its twenty-feet high ceilings, comfortable leather chairs, dark wood furniture and intricately patterned Turkish carpets, the room was a sort of Balkan gentleman's club. Even
Vanity Fair
described Slobodan's salon as ‘tastefully and timelessly' decorated.

After their election victory the Socialists controlled every ministry. The Belgrade publisher Braca Grubacic, sacked in one of Milosevic's purges, looked back ruefully on this time as Serbia's lost opportunity.

Things could have been different. We are a country without strong institutions to limit the power of one person, but we had something from Tito's Communism. It was not fantastic, but still it worked. It was not Romania here. Milosevic completely bypassed the institutions
and appointed his people. If you came here you would think, OK there are ministries here, etc. But Milosevic appointed the ministers. Eventually you would see that if Milosevic does not say yes or no, then nothing else matters. He gave the orders.
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Milosevic has often been described as a dictator, yet this is incorrect. The best description of his regime is ‘nationalist-authoritarianism', as defined by Professor Eric. D. Gordy.
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Such a regime uses nationalism as a means of legitimacy for its authoritarian structure. But it is not totalitarian. Unlike Romania under Ceausescu, Milosevic's Serbia never attempted to control every aspect of its citizens' lives. For example, the opposition press functioned reasonably freely. Ljubica Markovic and Aleksandar Nenadovic, the former editor of
Politika
, were able to launch an independent news agency, BETA. Milosevic's former schoolmate Seska Stanojlovic and the journalist Milos Vasic both worked at
Vreme
, a weekly news magazine whose columns were filled with coruscating and bitter attacks on the Milosevic regime.

Milosevic did not ban BETA or
Vreme
. They helped foster the illusion that Serbia was indeed a western-style democracy, with free speech.
Vreme
posed little threat, in any case, as its readership was mostly liberal intellectuals who already loathed Milosevic. Besides, there were many subtler ways of muzzling the independent media. The state supplier of newsprint would charge double the usual rate. The state distributor of publications would have ‘difficulties' moving copies around the country. State companies and enterprises – an important sector of the economy in a post-Communist state – would restrict their advertising to pro-regime publications.

In March 1991 the tensions within Serbia finally exploded. Milosevic was nearly toppled in ten days of protests and rioting that saw protestors take control of the capital. The Belgrade protests were Serbia's version of the Prague Velvet Revolution, with a touch of Tiananmen Square. In Czechoslovakia the Velvet Revolution had brought down the Communist government. In Beijing the students demanding democracy had been crushed by tanks. In Belgrade there was something of both.

It began on the morning of 9 March. Vuk Draskovic, the fiery opposition leader known as the ‘King of the Squares', called a demonstration to protest against state television's torrent of propaganda and the lack of airtime for the opposition. The demonstration was banned, but Serbian
nationalists united with liberal students to take over Belgrade's city centre, dodging police road-blocks and cordons. Serbian nationalists saw Milosevic as a Communist, or at least the heir to the Communists who had squashed Serbian nationalism. By lunchtime perhaps 100,000 people were jammed into Republic Square, spilling over on to the Terazie, with its pavement cafés. Speaking from the balcony of the National Theatre, Draskovic demanded a free media and an independent judiciary. At this stage the demonstration was orderly.

Milosevic had other ideas. Police squads in full riot gear formed a cordon around the protest. The police surged forwards firing tear gas canisters and a water cannon. Draskovic shouted: ‘Charge! Charge.' Not all the demonstrators were peaceful students. The crowd was ringed by the hard men of Draskovic's party, some of whose leaders had connections to Belgrade's underworld, such as a young gangster called Aleksandar Knezevic, known as ‘Knele', who later became one of the city's most famous underworld figures. When the police attacked, they fought back.

Violent clashes erupted as the protestors tried to break free and the police struggled to contain them. Plumes of tear gas drifted down streets slippery from the water cannon. Belgrade erupted into anarchy as the protestors broke through the police cordon. From Republic Square the demonstrators marched on their two main targets: parliament and state television. They occupied parliament, but a cordon of police in armoured vehicles surrounded the television building. The Romanian revolution had begun with the capture of the television station. Milosevic was determined that the same would not happen in Belgrade. The Serbian interior minister, Radmilo Bogdanovic, ordered massive armed reinforcements. So heavy was the police protection that from then on Serbian television was known as ‘TV Bastille'.

Milosevic, never known for his physical courage, was at an army compound outside Belgrade. At Dobanovci military base Milosevic knew he would be safe from the mob, even if Belgrade fell. There he used the secure military communications network to order the police and secret service to try and break the protest. But as the violence increased, perhaps inevitably, the police opened fire. Five demonstrators were wounded and an eighteen-year-old student was killed. Elsewhere a policeman also died in the riot. Together with over a hundred demonstrators, Vuk Draskovic was arrested at the parliament.

That evening Bogdanovic accused the independent television station
Studio B and radio B-92 of ‘calling for resistance to the government'. Serbian police closed down the stations. But federal prosecutors refused to bring any charges, and the stations were back on air the next day. Milosevic broadcast an ominous warning on state television. ‘Today in Serbia and in Belgrade that which is of greatest value for our land and nation came under attack – peace was threatened . . . the state organs of the republic will use all their constitutional authority to ensure that chaos and violence are not permitted to spread in Serbia.'
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This was code for sending the tanks in. Borisav Jovic rang around each member of the federal presidency, demanding authorisation for the army to crush the demonstration. Fearful of a repeat of Tiananmen Square, presidency members were initially reluctant to turn the army on the students. But as the chaos spread, Jovic eventually got his permission. Draskovic recalled: ‘We were attacked by 15,000 policemen, very well armed, with armoured cars, tear gas, horses and dogs. In spite of that we destroyed them, without even a knife, and Milosevic was forced to call out the army.'
⁷
Yugoslav military intelligence recorded a conversation between Blagoje Adzic, the army chief of staff, and the Serbian police minister: ‘When the army gets there, send in your police. Order them to attack the demonstrators. Go for them. Beat them until you are exhausted.'
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The demonstrators regrouped. Up to half a million people gathered in central Belgrade as people's power took over the capital. Students drafted and then read out their demands, including the release of everyone arrested on 9 March, the sacking of Dusan Mitevic and other television editors, and the resignation of Radmilo Bogdanovic. Demonstrations spread throughout the country. Milosevic was unnerved. He understood the power of crowds. He had deployed mobs all over Serbia during the late 1980s, but this time the opposition was launching its own ‘anti-bureaucratic revolution'.

On 11 March Milosevic did something unprecedented: he agreed to meet a student delegation. This was less the stirrings of a democratic impulse than Milosevic's acute realisation that the demonstrations had to be defused, or civil war could erupt. It was almost a year and half since the fall of the Berlin Wall, yet Milosevic's tired language shows how his transition from Communist to Socialist had been in name only. ‘People should not destabilise things at a time when we are trying to stop the resurgent Ustasha forces, Albanian secessionists, as well as all other forces of the anti-Serbian coalition which are endangering people's freedom and
rights,' he proclaimed. The journalists Laura Silber and Allan Little detail the next few minutes:

Tihomir Arsic, a young actor popular for his rendition of Tito, asked permission to open the window. The room was suddenly filled with the demonstrators chants of ‘Slobo, Saddam' . . . Milosevic pretended not to hear. [Student leader Zarko] Jokanovic showed him the picture of Milinovic, the youth killed during the demonstration. ‘Is there nothing human left in you?' The Serbian president turned deep red, but said nothing.
⁹

Events then took a bizarre turn. Jovic appeared on television, summoning the members of the federal presidency to Belgrade the next day for a meeting at four o'clock. Many anticipated a military coup. The Slovene representative was too frightened to attend. Stipe Mesic, the Croatian presidency member, bravely turned up. By this time fighting had erupted in Pakrac, Croatia, between rebel Serbs and the Croatian police. Belgrade was in chaos, the Yugoslav wars had begun, and not surprisingly Mesic feared being arrested.

Arriving at the presidency building, Mesic and the other members were highly alarmed to find themselves herded on to army buses under military escort. They were eventually ushered into an extremely cold room, where a camera was openly recording events. The army, it seemed, had hijacked its own commander-in-chief, the eight members of the federal presidency. Army winter-issue coats were handed out to the shivering politicians.

General Kadijevic, the Yugoslav defence minister, then demanded that the members of the federal presidency declare a state of emergency. This would allow the imposition of martial law. In effect this would be rule by Milosevic's diktat, as General Kadijevic followed Milosevic's orders. Milosevic would then have carte blanche to send more tanks into the streets of Belgrade to crush the student protest, and order military action in Croatia and Slovenia. But he still needed the federal presidency to vote in favour.

Perhaps no incident better illustrates the strange nature of Milosevic's regime than this one. This was a mass kidnapping and attempt to intimidate the presidency into doing his will, yet all the while observing the necessary constitutional niceties. Jovic called the vote. He needed five votes in favour to ‘legitimise' plans for martial law. Milosevic's
placemen – the representatives of Montenegro, Kosovo, Voivodina, and of course Jovic himself – voted yes. Stipe Mesic and Vasil Tuporkovski, the American-educated, pro-western Macedonian presidency member, voted no. The vote stood at four – two. Yugoslavia's future at that moment hinged on the decision of Bogic Bogicevic, the Bosnian representative. Since Bogicevic was a Bosnian Serb, Jovic expected him to vote with the Serbian bloc. But Bogicevic was a Yugoslav first. ‘Jovic started shouting,' Tuporkovski recalled. ‘Vote, what is the problem. Vote yes, vote no, but vote, Bogic, vote.' He voted no. Enraged, Jovic closed the session and then resigned from the federal presidency.
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The chaos on the streets was mirrored in the government.

Milosevic soon recovered his balance, and made enough concessions to defuse the protest. Vuk Draskovic was released on 13 March. Dusan Mitevic and other senior television editors were sacked. Radmilo Bogdanovic resigned. ‘The biggest mistake was to put tanks on the streets when the demonstrations started,' said Mitevic. ‘The students followed what happened in Prague, but the tanks showed that we did not know how to deal with them, because we had never had any experience of this, in Tito's time.' Milosevic gave Mitevic a pistol as a leaving present. Mitevic noted that after his sacking none of his former political allies called to see how he was. ‘It was a very educational experience,' he said dryly.

The March 1991 demonstrations showed that Serbia had arisen against Milosevic a year and a half too late. By the winter of 1989, when the people had taken over the streets of Berlin, Prague and Bucharest, Milosevic had already been anointed by the Serbian masses at Gazimestan. By December 1990 Serbia was also a democracy, albeit a warped and authoritarian one. On the battlefield of Kosovo Polje, and through the ballot box, Milosevic had defused enough of the tensions that brought down the neighbouring regimes to ensure that his survived.

In later years Draskovic was often criticised for failing to seize the moment on 9 March, and take power. He recalled: ‘We had elections in December 1990. At that time eighty per cent of Serbs regarded Milosevic as a national messiah. It was impossible and not very democratic to demand that Vuk Draskovic should be president, a loser, a man who had lost the elections.'
¹¹
Either way, toppling a government takes more than a sit-down protest and the sacking of some key officials. Half a million people on the streets is an impressive demonstration, but the
protestors' energy dissipated after winning some comparatively minor concessions. Whatever impetus there may have been for a revolution was lost in questions of broadcast media and government personnel.