Couple of days ago, early in the morning, we (when i say we:, i mean the citizens of Serbia) indirectly elected Tomislav Nikolic as speaker at the parliament of Serbia. Nikolic is the unofficial leader of the biggest Serbian ultra-right populistic party in Serbia, SRS, and the biggest party in Serbia in general. What this means is that we have elected a person with national-socialistic ideas for the head of the parliament and that is something that can’t go unnoticed in the world. So let’s see the reactions.
Russia was apparently the first one to congratulate us, without even being sarcastic, but European Union and the United States seem to have something against this.
EU postponed visa agreement signing which would make it easier for certain groups of citizens to get visas.
Council of Europe postponed the symbolic flag raising in Belgrade, i think probably because they don’t want to see Nikolic near the flagpole.
Dinar started losing its value so the National Bank had to intervene – current value is around 80 dinars for 1 EUR, let’s hope it stays that way Nope, it’s dropping again, now it’s 83 dinars for 1 euro.
Belgrade stock exchange shares started dropping, and one of the analysts actually calculated that the election of Nikolic cost Serbia half of billion euros in one day.
Foreign investments are currently on some kind of standby, i guess they are waiting to see if it’s safe to continue dealing with Serbia while it’s such an unstable situation.
The blogosphere reacts as well: Lucija says that she is puzzled with the latest situation development:
Perhaps this explains the increase in my friends’ jocular remarks about who I’ll marry and take with me when I head back home in the fall
East Ethnia gives his suggestion for the new government now that the new parliament speaker is already so ridicolous.
Frank tries to comfort us by predicting Nikolic will last on the position for mere six days (thanks, Frank).
Marko is in one way happy that the situation is at least pretty clear now that Kostunica sided with Nikolic.
Douglas of Fistfull of euros is trying to find a better word for Nikolic than obnoxious – i suggest: dangerous?
If there are any more opinions out there, please share them in comments, this is what i could find after a quick browse.
Serbian blogosphere is also reacting, although not so much as one would expect, i guess the state of limbo is taking it’s toll:
Velickovic suggests forming a sort of coalition between DS, G17 and LDP in case radicals and DSS form the government.
Mooshema decided to open her blog for your spitting pleasure, (btw, it seems that this caused editors of Blogorola to delete her blog from their list?)
Rest of the Serbian blogosphere reactions you can find at the Serbian part of the Beograd 2.0.
The main guilty one in all this is, ironicly enough, not Nikolic but our so-called prime minister Kostunica, who made it possible for this guy to become head of the parliament.
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Just a quick note to let you all know I gathered some of the Serbian reactions to Gravedigger at the Serbian part of the blog, if anyone’s interested.
‘Houston – we have a government’. Reports are coming in that late last night DSS, DS and G17 hatched a deal. God I’m relieved. And I dont care that the incompetant and incapable Jocic will remain as police minister. I’m just so relieved – this was not just another ususal political crisis in Serbia it was quite serious.
Nor do I care that DSS was slutting itself about. The radicals wont be very happy about this indecisive bride though. If I understand correctly all the same DSS members of parliament who voted him in will now vote that Nikolic be removed as speaker.
If you want a demonstration of principle thats it! And if it does happen like that I’ll be watching their snivelling, hypocritical little faces as they vote. How dare they bring the whole country to the brink like that just as a charade for a better negotiating position in government.
Estavisti, Blackbird – the lesson I have learnt from this is not to trust Kostunica. Dont hold me to it but that party currently has zero chance of me ever considering voting for them. Estavisti, Kostunica most certainly does not have the right idea about the countries future. I wasnt sure before but I wont be fooled more than once.
Praise the lord, we have government!
Heh, a report I’ve just read at B92. They quoted Nikolic saying that he spoke to Kostunica this morning. Kostunica ‘it would be good if you tendered your resignation (as speaker)’.
Will Nikolic make it easy for Kostunica or will he feel pissed that he was dumped at the alter after being given a wedding ring? This is like a soap opera.
Even though Jocic will stay on as police MInister Tadic will head a new department in charge co-ordinating activities of the intelligence services. This is supposed to take care of the Mladic issue.
Business has reacted positively as well – the BELEX stock exchange records record gains (and no saying this is due to outside factors).
Expect EU to congratulate Serbia and offer olive branches and accelerated processes on the re-admission agreement etc. Also expect that this will be enough for Serbia to win with its Eurovision entry.
Good God! Does anyone really take that driveling Eurovision song contest seriously in Europe? Come ON!
Glad you’re happier, bg anon, but I’m beginning to give up on Serbia all together what with the garbage I’ve been seeing written by this or that “commentator” or this or that “historian” from Serbia who are now crawling out of the woodwork to try to give credence to the West on the Kosovo issue, not to mention some of the people on this site on things Serbian in general. Sorosians, all, and I alternately cringe or despair. In fact, I am beginning to give up on a lot more than Serbia. This world is crap.
If the main motivation for some Serbs here is to stop having to queue for bread, then there is no ideology, merely materialism. Those Serbs who pan the Serbs holding onto Kosovo for dear life wouldn’t recognize, apparently, an ideal or an idea, if it smacked them in the face. It’s a damned good thing that this particular generation wasn’t called on to fight the Nazis or who knows what lampshades or soaps you would be incorporated into now.
Voja majstore! I’m pretty happy with this..I just hope DS doesn’t try to go behind his back, like they did when he was president of the FRY. Now, back to the issue at hand – KOSOVO. Incidentally Blackbird, I agree with the post above…
Heard the good news on the coalition during the day. Phew!
Perhaps discussion of Kosovo would be more fruitful if some thought was given to how Serbs and Albanians can live side by side with each other in the future. Whoever has formal sovereignty that surely is more important.
Talking of historians and commentators, you should see the abuse Natasha Kandic got over at the Guardian in the UK for a recent piece on Kosovo in Comment is Free. They all seemed to get round the ‘brainwashing’ somehow.
And talking of historians, Blackbird will hate this from Dubravka Stojanovic
http://www.bosnia.org.uk/news/news_body.cfm?newsid=2266
Glad you are all happy. I would write something about the new government but frankly, I’m a bit tired of all this politics like bganon and pissed that they had to scare me with Nikolic. I must admit i feel like Kostunica fooled us all just to remain in power, and i don’t like being fooled. Plus, East Ethnia summed it all up over there :
Next subject for me – Eurovision, not Kosovo.
I opened a blog with topic on adriatic-ionian problems. I write about relationships between eastern italian counties, eastern europe and, expecially, balkans. I hope u will enjoy.
http://questioneadriaticoionica.blogspot.com/
If our grandfathers and grandmothers had only known what kind of future “modern” Serbian generation they were willingly dying for in such enormous numbers when fighting the Nazis, I’ll bet they would have had second thoughts about making the sacrifice.
Yes, you go back to the Eurovision song contest. Now THAT’‘s something that REALLY matters…
I really hope that situation in Serbia will be soon clear and stable, for peace and propsperity of the nation. Pozdrav iz Italije!!!
Please don’t be paranoid. Blogorola team just had some problems with feed readers – no big story behind it – just technical difficulties. It happened with almost all blogs – my blog, and I’m on of the editors, was not on the page for four days. In case of any other questions you are more than welcome to contact us.
Watch Eurovision? Only when the triumph of a lesbian Gypsy sweeps away the dross
Germaine Greer
Monday May 21, 2007
Guardian
The Eurovision contest is over, some are hoping, forever. Yet no one but me in my dotage seems to have registered that something wonderful has happened, and that Eurovision may never be the same again. It was wonderful enough that a solid plain girl in glasses won it for Serbia with an old-fashioned torch-song; that she should have sung it in passionate earnest as a lover of her own sex is what made this viewer switch off the iron and start praying that the gods might let her win. When Marija Serifovic was asked in interviews why the presentation was so subdued, no high kicks, no pelvic thrusts, she was puzzled by the inappropriateness of the questions. While all around her were writhing and mugging, she sang Molitva as her ostracised self.
Now they want to say that the voting was crooked. But Serbia got points from all but five of the 23 countries entitled to vote; this was not a matter of voting for one’s cabal, or even tactical voting. The quality of Serbia’s offering was certainly recognised by the country’s Balkan neighbours, but it was rewarded also by Austria, Finland, Hungary and Switzerland, who came through with 12 points each. Usually I don’t care who wins Eurovision; this time I cheered every time Serbia increased its lead. For once winning was important. When 23-year-old Serifovic walked on to the glittering stage in her white plimsolls and unbuttoned black Dolce & Gabbana suit, the ends of her bow-tie hanging loose, kitsch was suddenly extinguished. When she stood four-square, lifted her head and sang, shrieking camp was silenced.
Serifovic’s big, supple voice, apparently effortlessly produced from her deep chest, is imbued with a special kind of feeling which comes from one of the wellsprings of the European song tradition. Marija Serifovic is not just an out lesbian, she is Romany. If ever a voice deserved to reign over Eurovision it is the voice of the Gypsy, who is made to live everywhere in Europe as if it was nowhere.
From the slopes of the Caucasus to the shores of the Atlantic, the Roma people can be found struggling with poverty and ill-health, unemployed, often undocumented, threatened with assimilation and the loss of what little culture they have left – and nowhere more so than in Serbia. Every Serbian knows that Serifovic is the daughter of the famous Romany singer, Verica Serifovic. The bookies gave Verica 10/1 against a victory for her daughter and she bet her life savings, £3,000, all or nothing. Average wages in Serbia are about £150 per month and only about 20% of Serbia’s 200,000 Roma are in work. Verica knew that her daughter’s song should have been a certainty. And so did I, but I would never have trusted the Eurovision lottery to come up with the right result.
Marija had sung the song, Molitva, or “Prayer”, with lyrics by Sasa Milosevic Mare and music by Vladimir Graic, many times before. Usually she sang it as a straight torch song, dressed in frilly jackets, shiny skirts, beads, makeup and frouffed-up hair. That was how she sang it in the national heats; the jury of experts preferred a different singer and a different song, but the phone and text votes decided the issue in Molitva’s favour. In the weeks between winning in Serbia and singing in Helsinki, Molitva was stripped down to be presented as an uncompromisingly lesbian love-lament. Serifovic has been out since 2004, but until the night of the Eurovision final she had never performed as a lesbian. In the midst of all the synthetic shimmy-shimmy-shake, she stood like a schoolboy, and sang her heart out.
She was every big, clumsy plain girl who has ever yearned for a smile of encouragement from the school beauty, every loser who has had to look on while males took for granted an intimacy she could never aspire to. Her shyness, her anguish, and the fat fake ruby heart pinned to her jacket, all told the same story of the love that nobody wants to hear about. The chorus of highly decorative straight women at first ignored her, then comforted her, and then, singing with her, recognised her as a lover. The half a heart drawn on the hand of one joined with the half a heart drawn on Serifovic’s hand, to become a whole heart, still bleeding, but acknowledged. It was simple. It was obvious, too obvious for the BBC’s Mark Savage, who decided in his knee-jerk revulsion that what he was watching was some kind of “slow-motion, lesbian porn flick”. Shame on him. Go, Marija!
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Eurovision Song Contest
20/May at 22:13
Great chance for positive PR
Eurovision victory through the eyes of Serbian bloggers
Richard West-Soley
A week has been plenty of time for Serbs to reflect on the feelings of national pride awoken and affirmed by Marija Serifovic�s sensational win in Helsinki. For years the pariah state in the shadow of the Yugoslav wars, Serbs have found it difficult to reconcile themselves to a damaged reputation at home and abroad; winning the Eurovision Song Contest might just be the balm that millions of ordinary Serb citizens were in need of. This hope is reflected in the words of countless Serb bloggers this week.
Bloggers across the Internet have reflected the sense of reborn pride, and are brimming with new hope for a brighter international future for the country, where the people need no longer feel ashamed to call themselves Serbs and be proud. Organising the contest, for a start, will give the country a chance to promote itself in a completely different light from the news reports of the 1990s that still colour the country for many TV viewers and newspaper readers in the West. “I consider this a great chance for positive PR of our country” writes Gorana Secibovic, continuing “in the Norwegian media, Serbia is mentioned only in relation to Mladic, Nikolic, Kosovo and the mass graves around the region. Just a few days ago, a Norwegian lady asked me if the army preserves the peace on Serbian streets, if military vehicles are patrolling around.” Belgrade 2008 will give the nation a fighting chance, at least, to right some of the wrongs committed against it in wider European attitudes.
It feels good to be a Serb
Milosrdni Andrjeo reflects the hopeful mood: “here’s a chance for Serbia to show itself off in a bright light next year” whilst blogger Trotter sums up the people’s joy similarly, with thanks to the woman who brought the opportunity home: “thank you Marija for promoting my Serbia this way!” Maja is more explicit in just what the singer has allowed for her personally: “she managed to show me again how it feels good to be a Serb” writes the blogger.
Next May, thousands of foreign journalists and fans will flood the capital for two weeks, creating a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reaffirm everything which is good about Serbian culture to the World. Neven Andjelic sums this up: “those who decide to visit Belgrade will obtain, I hope, a more positive picture of Serbia, about Belgrade, because they have a lot of prejudices against us, taking into account all the events of the 1990s.”
The East is on the rooftop of Europe
But what of the cries from the West of diaspora voting and neighbourly exchanges? Andjelic gives his own take on the phenomena, turning the tables and placing the blame squarely on the West for creating volumes of people traffic across the continent, with the East simply biting back. “The West wanted to create vast diasporas out of the East Europeans, so now the diasporas are voting for their own. The East is on the rooftop of Europe. Deservedly” he claims. This year’s contest is a “success for democracy”.
Surely, there could be fewer countries more in need of a regeneration of reputation and confidence than Serbia in the contest, and the benefits are all there for the taking. “Let’s take this opportunity to improve our reputation in the World” are the words of Glavna Strana, echoing fellow bloggers, although with the more practical – and perhaps slightly cynical – observation that “now, big money will pour into Serbia because Eurovision is a commercial festival – our government should plan how to cash in on this ‘kitsch parade’ as best as it can and invest the money in renewing the culture and alternative music scene in Serbia.” Cynicism or not, this view cements the contest as one of the most important cultural events in the European calendar, and one whose benefits should not be so easily overlooked. All the opinions expressed by these Serb bloggers from all over Europe confirm that the impact of the contest is a force to be reckoned with – and potentially, a hugely positive one for all concerned.
This article was written thanks to sources from Zeljana Grubisic (Southeast European Times) and Ljubis Bojic (Global Voices).
Katja, thanks for the clearup. Sorry for being paranoid.
Anytime.
Fuck serbia…. You guys shit and sucks
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