Institutions Abused

PUBLISHED BY “Biljana Kovačević-Vučo” Fund 30/II Osmana Đikića St. 11000 Belgrade FOR THE PUBLISHER Dušan Bogdanović EDITORIAL BOARD Dragan Banjac // Srđan Barišić // Sonja Biserko // Miomir Brkić // Vladimir Goati // Miroslav Hadžić // Žarko Korać // Drago Kovačević // Radovan Kupres // Vigor Majić // Nikola Samardžić // Refik Šećibović // Miloš Vasić PROJECT COORDINATORS Suzana Blesić, James May RESEARCHERS Milan Bogdanović, Jasmina Knežević, Saša Lazić, Marko Milošević, Anica Nikolić, Ognjen Piljić, Zoran Radoman, Novak Vučo, Srđa Vučo ART DIRECTION AND GRAPHIC DESIGN Ivan Benussi TRANSLATION Milan Bogdanović PRINTED BY DMD Štamparija Circulation 1.000 Belgrade, August 2011 First Edition All rights reserved. No part of this book can be used or reproduced in any form without the publisher’s written consent. Dušan Bogdanović Biljana Kovačević-Vučo project authors Institutions abused: who was who in Serbia 1987-2000 CONTENTS 9 Preface 17 Methodological note 20 Abbreviations 23 Nomenklatura: DIRECTORy OF THE NOMENKLATURA OF THE MILOŠEVIć REGIME 315 Chronology: DEFINING EVENTS OF THE MILOŠEVIć PERIOD 331 Key Positions of the Nomenklatura: LIST OF STATE, SOCIAL, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS, ORGANIZATIONS AND ENTERPRISES CONTAINED IN THIS BOOK This book is dedicated to the memory of Biljana Kovačević-Vučo. Her wit, creativity, courage and beauty will not cease to inspire us. Note This book is the result of an ongoing research project into the use, abuse and misuse of state institutions and other organizations under the auspices of the Milošević regime, which seeks to map and document the nomenklatura of that regime. It is complemented by an online database (www.javnidosije.rs) that will be updated regularly as research progresses. PREFACE By Dušan Bogdanović, Chairperson of the Biljana Kovačević-Vučo Fund More than a decade after Slobodan Milošević stepped down as President of the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and, more importantly, as the undisputed leader of all Serbs – in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Kosovo alike – this society is still struggling to contend with the legacy of the Milošević regime. Slobodan Milošević, the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and their allies were at the head of a complex apparatus of military aggression, internal repres- sion, media propaganda, an instrumentalized judiciary and financial struc- tures, through which policies were pursued that caused immense suffering throughout a disastrous decade and a half of hatred, hostility and war on the territory of the former federated republics of Yugoslavia and, indeed, in Serbia itself. The October 5th 2000 overthrow of Milošević should have marked the beginning of drawing a clear line of discontinuity with those policies and their unequivocal condemnation. However, reflecting upon the direction in which the nation’s political and intellectual elites have moved over the past decade, it seems impossible to escape the conclusion that the promise offered by the October 5th uprising has not been fulfilled. The failure of the DOS1 coalition government to cleanse the state – primarily the military, security services, police, foreign service, media, judiciary, educa- tion system, business elite and financial institutions – of the legions of office holders, functionaries and regime collaborators inherited from Milošević has, since the moment he was ousted, jeopardized Serbia’s transition towards an open society based on a functioning system of democratic institutions and 1 DOS: Democratic Opposition of Serbia – a coalition of 18 opposition parties pooled on the eve of the Sep. 2000 presidential election with the aim of ousting Milošević. 11 INSTITUTIONS ABUSED the rule of law. Moreover, the vested interests of the vestiges of the regime not to re-open the past and expose its truths has prevented almost all attempts to face the recent past and learn lessons from it. The Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (Komisija za istinu i pomirenje), established in 2002 and chaired by Vojislav Koštunica, then President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, could and should have been a serious attempt to investigate the abuses of the Milošević regime, but it effectively collapsed in 2003, two years short of its mandate, with no conclusions published. During Mr. Koštunica’s2 two terms as Prime Minister (2004-20073 and 2007-2008), it appeared that he made it a top priority to marginalize reformists and reverse the progress made toward democratization during the brief period between October 5th 2000 and Prime Minister Djindjić’s assassination on March 12th 2003, allowing many members of Milošević’s nomenklatura to re-occupy important posts in state institutions and other national bodies. It is widely accepted that very little has changed since the present government coalition of DS4, SPS5 and G17+ came into office in 2008. The joint DS/SPS Declaration on Political Reconciliation in 2008, initiated by Boris Tadić – president of both the Republic of Serbia and leader of the Democratic Party – has, by virtue of his decree, consigned the past to the past and rehabilitated the [Post-]Milošević SPS, accepting that party as a fully- fledged democratic partner in Serbian politics and allowing its representatives to occupy key posts in the government, judiciary, public enterprises and other important institutions. It must be said, however, that SPS’s apparent aspira- tion to transform itself into a pro-European “social-democratic” party, led by Ivica Dačić, SPS Chairperson and current Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, does contain elements – albeit restrained and carefully staged – that can be interpreted as the party distancing itself from Milošević’s legacy. It remains to be seen how genuine these apparent moves are. The result of this decade of inaction is that, unlike many other ex-communist countries and despite the obvious imperative, Serbia has no tangible instrument of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (confronting one’s past with the aim of learning 2 Vojislav Koštunica: President of the Democratic Party of Serbia 3 Minority government supported by the Socialist Party of Serbia 4 DS: Democratic Party 5 SPS: Socialist Party of Serbia 12 INSTITUTIONS ABUSED lessons from it and preventing its repetition). No mechanism has been created by the state to expose those who misused their positions within state institutions and other organs during the Milošević regime and no adequate process of lustration, vetting, public disclosure, or, where appropriate, criminal prosecu- tion, has been implemented6. It is, therefore, with concern that we observe the experiences of other countries with a similar history to Serbia. It is evident that in countries where society has lost faith in its system of institutions and become accustomed to abuse of power, corruption and impunity extended to state of- ficials, as in Serbia, it is extremely valuable to document and reveal the facts about the past, systematically and without political interference, and to conduct a robust and ongoing public debate about what those facts mean for society in terms of lessons that must be learned. Further, experience elsewhere informs us that this process may be essential in order to rebuild trust in the state, confi- dence in the future and establish a deep rooted and widespread commitment to liberal-democratic values and the rule of law. It is our firm belief that if a trau- matized post-conflict society such as this is incapable or unwilling to face its past and draw lessons from it, it runs a very significant risk of failing to prepare itself for the future and will remain unable to achieve and live by internationally accepted values and standards, remaining on the periphery of a fast changing and increasingly interdependent world. It was with the intention of facilitating the process of reflecting on Serbia’s recent past and initiating a broader social debate about it that we embarked on the project that resulted in this book. More positively, beyond the role of the state and politics, a significant amount of research and analysis by academics, analysts, journalists and other experts has been published, seeking to examine and explain the historical roots and social and political background of the system that led to Milošević’s rule, the regime’s architecture and its modus operandi. This project builds on this body of knowledge and intends to contribute to its further development. It also seeks to address a recurring problem facing scholars and others studying the Milošević period: the lack of coherent and verified data about the setup of the institutional infrastructure in Serbia during the 1990s and, sometimes more importantly, the people heading those institutions. 6 Except in the case of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which the state is obliged to conduct under international law. 13 INSTITUTIONS ABUSED It is for all of these reasons – and as a token of recognition of the countless victims of the policies pursued in this part of Europe during the 1990s – that an idea was born to embark on a research effort aimed at mapping the system of state and social institutions that existed under Milošević’s rule and document- ing the individuals entrusted with leading them. In this way we believed we could identify the nomenklatura of the Milošević regime (see methodological note, page 17). The result, contained in this book, is a directory of the nomenklatura of the Milošević regime in the period from 1987 to 2000 – from Miloševic’s ascent to power at the 8th Session of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Serbia in September 1987 and his resignation on October 6th 2000. We hope and intend that this endeavor will facilitate future research and analysis substantially and prompt the political community to take a more serious approach to facing the legacy of the past in Serbia. That this project represents a pioneering endeavor in this part of the world7 is significant. If it is to have the impact we intend, it must be entirely accurate. Therefore, particular attention has been paid to the design of methodology to ensure the accuracy of this publication and the accompanying online database.

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