EDITORIAL
by VETON SURROI
In the center of Belgrade, there is a building called "Palata Albanija", the highest peak of the town at the beginning of this century. For Albanians that would go to Belgrade, this was an automatic sign of sympathy, because of the name, but its other meaning was forgotten. For many years there was the need to remember the marching of the Serbian army through Albania in WWI, what the Serbs call the "Albanian golgota", meanwhile Albanians narratively say "When the Shkja got in".
These days, the building is witnessing the protests and is often
filmed by the cameras that wish to capture the opposition
leaders. In the same way this building is being ignored by the
journalists (finally, this is not important for the
demonstrations), the anti-Milosevic opposition is not mentioning
the Albanian question and Kosova.
In fact, even when it was mentioned, it was referred to in the
negative context. Starting from the demonstrators' calls to the
police "Go to Kosova" (the message: don't beat us, there are
others to beat there) and going up to the many variations of one
of the leaders, Djindjic, that Milosevic is capable of selling-
out Kosova (message: the opposition will know how to better
defend the idea of Greater Serbia).
Naturally, this mood is contrary to the aura of the students
revolt that, with its creativity, insists to project a new
political content, that of building a civic society. But this too
is part of the Serb contradictions: as big is the difference
between Milosevic and the opposition, that big is the difference
between the concept of the building of a civic society and the
concept of a large part of the opposition.
The influential part has decided not to declare itself about any
important matter at the beginning of the protests, first of all
Kosova, because, they said, the regime would misuse this is its
medial campaign. Nevertheless, as the time passes by, the
statements of the opposition leaders do not encourage those that
think that this opposition is against the politics of Milosevic
and not only Milosevic as a person.
Serbia passed through the phase of collective chauvinism in the
past decade, but the opposition is not doing much to prove that
its efforts are against the bases of Milosevic's politics.
Besides the bases of state economy, oligarchic communist
administration, there is also the basis of Serbia's expansion.
Kosova has repeated the opinions that "the opposition is worse
than Milosevic", partially inspired by the opposition's actions.
Some of these voices would say the same thing even if the
opposition would have a differentiated posture, simply because
of the inertia or because of misunderstanding, and the lack of
understanding of Milosevic's politics. Maybe with the pluralism
of the Serbian society and the Kosovar one we are entering a
phase in which one understands that the problems between Serbia
and Kosova are much more complicated than they seem at first
sight. And maybe the sole process of understanding of both sides
could ease the complication.