The West Sets the Sights on Serbian Voevodina

The management of the UN international court in the Hague threw a wet blanket on the heads of the Belgrade leaders who have already trumpeted the victory of Serbian president Boris Tadic and his team at the UN General Assembly. Belgrade’s claim regarding the compatibility of Kosovo independence to international law will be heard as a standard court procedure.

In other words any court decision will take years to be made rather than months, which term the media controlled by the Serbian authorities have already trumpeted. What that means is in the several years to come the Serbian authorities will have to put an act showing their concern over issues relating to state sovereignty and territorial integrity. As things develop, by the time the UN International Court announces its decision on the Kosovo issue, it will lose its importance for Serbia for the reason that by then it would lose Kosovo, and possibly - on top of that- Voevodina.

The Belgrade authorities continue to repeat that the October 7, 2008 decision by the UN General Assembly to back Serbia’s claim should stop the process of further recognition of the illegal act of the Kosovo separatists by other states. Serbia’s Foreign Minister Vuk Yeremic referred to the UN vote as “a great day for international law.” Nada Kolundjiya, one of the leaders of the presidential Democratic Party and the chair of the faction “For a European Serbia” in the Serbian Skupshtina, expressed her confidence that “the International Court would back up Serbia’s position of disclaiming Kosovo’s unilaterally proclaimed independence as inconsistent with the norms of international law.” Serbian premier Mirko Tzvetkovic, a servile Tadic follower and a member of the Tadic-led Democratic Party glibly stated on October 13 that according to the information he had at his disposal, the Serbian issue would be taken up as “an urgent one.”

But the court was of a different opinion. The very next day Tsvetkovic had to admit that the hearings of the Serbian appeal would not be urgent. Later, the Court confirmed this information. To explain why he as the head of the government made two totally opposing statements within 24 hours, Mirko Tsvetkovic mentioned results of some kind of “an extra verification procedure” he had carried out.

And while the pro-Western Serbian ruling elite practiced in interpreting the fact of an indefinite postponement of hearings at the UN International Court, another separatist hotbed grew ripe in another Serbian province controlled (so far) by Belgrade. Parliament of the autonomous province of Voevodina tabled at the Skupshtina a draft of its new Statute (the former one was adopted in 1991), in essence granting the province all the symbols of statehood, including its own government, the central bank, representation offices abroad and representation in international organisations, as well as the right to conclude international agreements. After heated debate just one amendment to the document out of the 155 proposed by the opposition, including the Serbian Radical Party and the Democratic Party of Serbia was moved, which means the start of operation of the voting machine by the parliamentary majority. This majority in the provincial Skupshtina of Veovodina is formed by Boris Tadic’s supporters. The above-mentioned Mrs. Kolundjia has already stated that the draft of Voevodina Statute was “consistent with Serbia’s Constitution” and “a maximum consensus” of the Serbian society should be reached on the issue.

Therefore, the forecasts that the pro-Western group led by Boris Tadic jointly with Hungarian separatists might implement their plan of final dismembering of the Serbian state to turn it into an appendage of globalist structures. As for Hungarians, they may try to support granting Voevodina its statehood, thus turning Serbia into a Serbian-Hungarian federation. Their next steps would include a withdrawal of Voevodina from the line-up of Serbia, launching a campaign of “squeezing out” Serbs (along the Kosovo lines) by local extremists with the political and propaganda support of Budapest, and finally, annexing the province to “Mother Hungary” within the borders of the middle-ages “Crown of St.Isztvan.”

According to available information, this plan was devised in the early 2000s, when Josf Kasa, presently the Honorary president of the Union of Voevodina Hungarians, acted as the vice premier in the government of Zoran Jinjic. The ideas of Jinjic and Kasa are developed by their present-day heirs Tadic and Pastor.

The linkage of Tadic’s Democrats and Hungarian separatists of Voevodina became apparent earlier this year. Boris Tadic won the second round of presidential elections in February thanks to the vote of Voevodina Hungarians. Before the second round their leader Isztvan Pastor (who had a 2.26% vote in the first round) called on his compatriots to vote for Tadic and against Tomislav Nikolic, the candidate of the Serbian Radical Party, spreading lies about Nikolic’s plans to run Serbia into an ethnically pure state.

Tadic won the second round with a margin of 2.38%, so it had definitely been the Voevodina Hungarians who made it possible for the current Serbian leader to stay at power for a second term.

The forces of Hungarian separatism in Serbia (the MPs representing the Hungarian coalition led by Isztvan Pastor whose members are also Josef Kasa’s Union of Voevodina Hungarians) appear to be the principal opponents to ratification of the Russian-Serbian inter-governmental agreement on cooperation in the energy field. They have good reasons to assess the planned purchase by “GazpromNeft” of the state company “Serbia’s Oil Industry” based in Voevodina as a principal threat to their separatist plans, as that company could then become interlinked with other parts of an infrastructure connected with the “South Stream” gas pipeline, the economy of the united Serbia and customers in the European Union countries. The agreement with Russia is disadvantageous to the Tadic group, the chief advocates of the Western interests in Belgrade..

The time has come for the anti-state Tadic-Pastor alliance to hurry up.The rapid enforcement of the new Voevodina Statute along with delaying the conclusion of the agreement with Russia are all parts of one and the same strategy. The price of this “operation” could be Serbia’s loss of Voevodina.
The leading opposition forces in Serbia have already stated they would take the case to the country’s Constitutional Court for its ruling on the consistency of the new Voevodina Statute to Serbia’s Constitution. The intentions of the Hungarian separatists clearly indicate that they both refuse to regard observance of the Consitution as their principle task and openly raise the issue of a revision of the Constitution to suit their interests.

The “Joint Concept of Autonomy of the Parties of Voevodina Hungarians”, a programme document of the Hungarian Coalition openly says that “the goal of the Hungarian Coalition is a significant consolidation of Voevodina’s autonomy by way of changing the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia for the purpose of reconstruction in our province of the legislature, the executive, and partly, the judiciary.” The key word here is “reconstruction”. It is nothing but an appeal to the recurrence to the period in history when Voevodina, and at large the Balkans Hungarians, had the state-forming authority to create state within the borders of Austrian-Hungarian empire in 1867-1918. The election programme with which the Hungarian Coalition intends to take part in all parliamentary elections in 2008 – 2012 (with the expected early dissolution of Serbia’s Skupshtina) formulates the chief goal in even a more detailed way, which is assisting to turn Serbia into a state “founded on the principle of de-centralisation.”

Serbia has already seen it all in another province, Kosovo that at first turned into a seat of armed terrorism, then into an arena of “ethnic cleansings”, and finally, into a self-proclaimed state, recognised by the United States and the preponderance of the EU member-states. And at the time, the early 1980s, it all began with the slogan “Kosovo is a Republic.” The Statute prepared by the leaders of Voevodina Hungarians and supported by the Tadic-led Democratic Party’s parliamentary majority, aims exactly at the same thing- institutionalising elements of a republican level. The rest is just technicality.

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