CEEOL - Search Result

№ 50 - KANDIDATURA ZA EU – ISTORIJSKI ISKORAK

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English,Serbian / Publication Year: 2009

After three decades of wandering, the defeat of the Greater Serbia project and all the attempts to keep it alive, the Serb elite was divided over a crucial issue: accession to EU. During his two-year premiership (2001-2003) Zoran Djindjic defined Serbia as a European country. Contrary to all expectations, his assassination put this option to death. Extradition of Slobodan Milosevic to the tribunal in The Hague was among Zoran Djindjic’s legacy. And that was a watershed in Serbia’s policy in the years that followed.

More...

№ 51 - Vojvodina’s Statute: First Major Step towards Modernization And Decentralization

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 2009

The debate on the Statute of Vojvodina revealed that key political actors cannot reach a consensus about the decentralization model to be applied to Serbia. A “silent political war” over the Statute laid bare conceptual differences between advocates of centralism and monopoly of power on the one hand, and advocates of a comprehensive decentralization of Serbia on the other. The former demagogically hide themselves behind overemphasized national pathos and concern for Serbia’s integrity and sovereignty, while the latter call for an open society and efficient administration and market economy.In the society without a clear-cut strategy for the country’s development and in the atmosphere of overall disorientation, autonomists were also somewhat at loss when it came to efficient action against the deliberate delay to place the draft statute at parliamentary agenda. It turned out that provincial authorities had no plan for counteracting this unnecessary delay.Four options were in play: an appeal to the Constitutional Court of Serbia, calling of a provincial referendum, including the statute issue in the process of European integrations and, finally, dissolving of the provincial parliament. The ceremony of proclamation of the Statute did not put an end to the “battle for Vojvodina.” Vojvodina will be unable to efficiently exercise the powers it has been invested with unless it has the right to decide on resources necessary for it. New polemic, assaults and accusations will stem from the process of solving the problems of the autonomy’s functioning. Those seeing Vojvodina’s property and income as a material basis for implementation of “a separatist program” are not few.

More...

№ 52 - Huliganstvo: sa političkog na sportski teren

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English,Serbian / Publication Year: 2009

Ex-Yugoslavia’s bloody disintegration advanced violence into a way of life. After October 5, Vojislav Kostunica, the Serb Orthodox Church and scores of various organizations were preoccupied with rounding-off an ethnic state and hence reshaped the Serb nationalism. Kostunica’s two premierships were marked by numerous assaults against minority communities (mostly in Vojvodina in 2004-05) – and that resulted in internationalization of the Vojvodina issue. Policy of impunity practically enthroned the model of violence on which new generations were brought up. The value system was distorted and social tensions became a constant. Serbia’s present phase of state-building along the lines of European values faces strong opposition mostly from the groupings that have been particularly active at the time of Kostunica’s premiership. These groupings at still acting along the same lines: legitimization of nationalistic goals.

More...