Serbia Today Interview Branislav Trajkovic

TODAY

INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE ON SERBIAN CURRENT AFFAIRS

Serbia

Custom Search

SerbiaTODAY
BLOG

Amazon.com Widgets

Forecast Satellite

INTERVIEW OF THE WEEK
Interview, August 15, 2009
Branislav Trajković,
The President Serbian League Party

By: Miodrag Stosic

Belgrade, Aug.15,2009, (Serbia Today) - Matters of restitution, integrations and internal political reforms are always actual in Serbia. On those and the other topics, we talked to Branislav Trajković, President of Serbian League Party.

Mr. Trajković, when was Serbian League Party formed? Does it belong to a civil, or national block, or you think such divide is unnecessary now?

We are formed in 2006, as a national and monarchist party, which represents the interests of humiliated civilians.

To what is the main part of your party’s program dedicated?
To natural restitution, which is giving all confiscated property back to their owners, and to reconstruction of Serbian civil society inside natural borders where Serbs live.

When did state of Serbia start to solve denationalization problem? Compare state’s relation to that matter before October 5^th, 2000, and after.

Dictator Slobodan Milošević in 1991 brought back to the owners by law, around 500 thousand acres of agricultural land, which had been confiscated as a forced purchase. Democratic government after October 5^th used to sell confiscated property in privatizations, to rent it, and constantly planned never to restitute it. The property that had been taken from the Church, they restituted step by step, until Dijana Dragutinović, minister of finance, last year banned further restitution.

What’s happening with a long-announced Law on restitution?
Under Mirko Cvetković and his coalition partners’ government, Law on natural restitution will never be adopted, because it conflicts with their ideology, as well as the interests of Serbian tycoons.

What is the experience of the other post-communist countries with a restitution?

Absolutely all the countries from our neighborhood, and Eastern Europe adopted laws and restituted almost all confiscated property. Serbia is the only country that didn’t do that, finding various excuses, while it allowed tycoons to rob and resell that property. Slovenians had the best model of natural restitution, which they finished before privatization, and that’s why they are in the EU, before all of us.

What does Serbian League think about integration of Serbia into the EU?

Europe is the place where we should be, in political and in life practice sense. Serbian League, two years ago, warned that corrupted government in Serbia don’t want to see Serbia in the EU. We can see that even today. Laws they propose today remind us of Tito’s time, when there was one party, and all of them voted for those laws in order to save the party, and not in order to support the interests of citizens and the state.

Is a matter of Kosovo in conflict with a matter of integrations?
We suggested that a matter of Kosovo should be solved by restitution of confiscated property, but Vojislav Koštunica didn’t want to adopt law on restitution. That’s why Serbs who were expelled from Kosovo, as well as we here in Serbia, feel like refugees in their own country.

There’s a re-registration of political parties in Serbia. Is the goal of that greater efficiency in politics, or removing smaller parties?
A number of signatures required to register a party is increased 100 times, which leads to vanishing of small parties and political ideas, on local, as well as on a regional level.

Tell us something about relations of your party to Diaspora?
There is a usual cooperation through family and friendly relations. No one from Diaspora is interested for restitution so much, because people have new lives. Many of them don’t want to come to the country that took their property, so they think this is still a communist society, and that they wouldn’t be safe here.

In spite of world economic crisis, Serbia welcomes many foreigners. What would you suggest them to pay attention to? What is a nicer face of Serbia?

Only beautiful, but neither simple nor cheap women, as well as historical monuments from which Serbs didn't learn anything, and which foreigners may enjoy.