INTRODUCTION - Part 04

INTRODUCTION

Stagnation in the development of society, economic difficulties, growing social tensions and open international conflicts, causing deep concern in our country.

Severe crisis hit not only the political and economic system, but also the entire public order of the country. Everyday occurrences such as irresponsibility and neglect of job responsibilities, corruption and

nepotism, lack of legal certainty, bureaucratic arbitrariness, disregard of the law, growing mistrust between people and the more unscrupulous individual and group egoism.

The collapse of moral values, bad reputation of leading society institutions, distrust in the ability of those who make decisions followed by apathy and indignation in the people, alienation from all the officers of law and order. Objective examination of the Yugoslav reality has revealed that there is plenty of opportunity that the current crisis will end in a social shock with unforeseeable consequences, not excluding the devastating outcome of the breakup of the Yugoslav state. No one is entitled to close their eyes on what is happening and what could happen, especially not the oldest institution of scientific and cultural achievements of our people.

The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts feels obligated, at this fateful moment, to share its views on the social situation and is of the belief that it can contribute to the exit from current troubles. The nature of this document, however, does not allow a departure from the key issues of the Yugoslav reality. Sadly, included among these questions, we must also include the unspecified and, with the new developments, the very gloomy situation of the Serbian people.

SANU MEMORANDUM (2)

(Changes to the Yugoslav Constitution, taking into account the following great, civilized principles that are a necessary condition for the rise of a modern society)

a) Sovereignty of the people. At the very foundation of modern civilization is the idea that the highest source of political power are the people, that the only legitimate political authority is one that comes from the freely-expressed will of the people, and therefore there are no moral or legal grounds for any elite (by the grace of God, by blood, religion, race, class, ideological affiliation, historical merit or by whatever other excuse) to take possession by force of the right to speak, to decide and to serve in the name of the people.

People can relinquish political power to their representatives only at certain times. People have the right to choose their representatives,

control them and change them and, if necessary, replace them, even by force. Should their representatives choose to break their “social contract” and pursue their own interests instead of the general interests of the public, then the people have the right to remove them. The people’s principle of sovereignty affirms the democratic political philosophy and practice of the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century. However, the ultimate consequences of this radical principle bring into being a socialist theory. If the monopoly of economic power is also one that is based on the formation of elites whose powers can be imposed on society and if they achieve full control of political life, then the people’s principle of sovereignty becomes incompatible and so are all the institutions that provide that monopoly, be it in a capital or bureaucratic state. In this sense the full sovereignty of the people would be realized even in a classless society in which political and economic and cultural life can be organized in a democratic way.

The assumption for such a democracy (“democracy of the councils” or “integrated self-management”) is a free choice of having the right to change all officials, to have public control over their work, to share in their governing powers and to remove bureaucratic privileges. These prerequisites have long been realized in modern societies. Yugoslavia, however, has not made that transition and has not yet reached that level, but for some time now it has made the proclamation for the idea of self-management, de-bureaucratization and the adaptation of professionalism in its politics.

b) Self-determination of a nation. In a modern society, every political oppression and discrimination on the grounds of nationality is unacceptable and uncivilized. The Yugoslav solution to the national question, in the beginning, could have be seen as an exemplary model of a multinational federation in which the principle of a single state and state policy were successfully attached to the principle of political and cultural autonomy of nations and national minorities. In the course of the last two decades, however, we have witnessed an increase in the weakening of the unity principle and in exaggeration in the principle of national autonomy, which in practice turned into parts of sovereignty (the republics which are not nationally homogeneous). Weaknesses that were present in the model from the beginning became increasingly

visible. All nations were equal: the Serbian nation, for example, did not receive the right to have its own state. Segments of the Serbian population, which lived in significant numbers in other republics, had no rights, as opposed to national minorities, to speak its own language and use its own alphabet, to politically and culturally organize, to jointly develop the unique culture of its people. The unprecedented persecution of the Serbians living in Kosovo showed that those principles that protect the autonomy of a minority (Albanians) are not applied when it comes to protecting minorities within the minority (the Serbs, Croats, Turks and Roma living in Kosovo). Given the existing forms of national discrimination in Yugoslavia today, this country cannot be seen as modern and democratic.

c) Human rights. The modern era has begun with the affirmation of human rights. Originally they were called civil rights: freedom of thought, of conscience, of speech, of movement, of conformity, to organize, public expression, demonstrations, choosing representatives. In this century these civil rights were added to the socio-economic rights: the right to work, to a free choice of profession, education, equal remuneration for equal work, to social security. The UN General Assembly formulated these rights in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted on December 10, 1948. Our country is one of those countries which had adopted this declaration; Yugoslavia is also a signatory to the Helsinki Agreement and all related documents.

There is no doubt that there are a number of modern countries which, to a degree, have realized even less human rights than we have in our country. But here, “verbal assaults” are still prosecuted, books are prohibited and destroyed, theatrical presentations are taken out of the repertoire because of “unacceptable ideas”, public sharing of opinions is hindered, organizing is prohibited, events and demonstrations are prohibited, use of constitutional rights to protest by sending petitions to state bodies qualify as hostile acts, protest leaders are pursued and persecuted, the election of officials is turning into a farce of self-appointments. While all this is going on we cannot consider ourselves a civilized and enlightened society.

d) Rationality. Our modern age is an age of rationality. Social institutions and the way social life is organized must pass the test in the court of reason. It is not always about rational objectives: a major weakness in our epoch is the separation of politics from ethics and science. But instrumental rationality and the ability to find adequate means, once adopted, effective implementation of policies ‘conditio sine qua non’ can be determined for any modern state. It further means that any modern state has a great system when individual parts are regulated in a unique way and also coordinated and directed so that the rules of the game are clear, stable and changeable only after serious study and preparation. State officials are selected primarily according to criteria of competence and personal integrity and decisions are largely made based on reliable information and on costs and benefits analysis. Here, none of those ‘rational policy’ conditions are satisfied: our country is composed of eight separate and poorly connected systems, and an overall development policy does not exist. And if it does not exist on paper it could not be realized in practice; the rules of the game are constantly changing ad hoc and at best are made known only one year earlier; our officials are selected primarily on a criteria of loyalty and are largely incompetent; decisions are made quickly, arbitrarily and with bias, without public discussion, on the basis of unreliable, one-sided information and without considering other possible alternatives. While this irrational working style prevails in our politics, we can not consider ourselves a modern society.

From this analysis it follows that political democratization and fundamental personnel renewal, real self-determination and equality of all members of the Yugoslav nations, including Serbia, full realization of civil and human socio-economic rights, consistent rationalization of the Yugoslav political system and policy development are those necessary preconditions without which it cannot even be imagined how we can get out of the current crisis that has gripped Yugoslav society.