Serbian Prime Minister Assasinated!

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger At least we don't lock people up and torture them, calling them "unlawful combatants."

The Red Cross moniters and regularly inspects Getmo and they have never said anything about torture. They and numerous other organizations have spoken out about Chinese Communists torturing and enslaving prisoners; so get your facts straight before you troll.

[Tattila the Hun]

Why is it called assassination, btw? Why not just a plain old murder?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Ramo
Colombia isn't the same thing as Peru.

And the primary terrorists in Colombia are tacitly state-sanction right-wing paramiltaries - the AUC.

If "primary" means numbers of terrorist acts commited per year then the marxist rebels/mafia is still the biggest terrorist group in Columbia and they have been for thirty years.

[Ramo]

Wrong. The FARC/ELN/etc. is a much less significant force than the AUC as far as terror goes. The paramilitaries have been the worst for quite a while. From the 2002 AI annual report:

Paramilitary groups acting with the active or tacit support of the security forces were responsible for the vast majority of extrajudicial executions and ''disappearances''; many of their victims were tortured before being killed. Armed opposition groups were responsible for violations of international humanitarian law, including arbitrary or deliberate killings.

http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2002.nsf/amr/colombia!Open

[player1]

Uhm...

Now back to the topic.

This is sad news for Serbia.
This would probably lead to some chaos, in political scene in Serbia.

I'm pretty sorry for him, because he was just 50 year old, had 2 young children and wife and whole life ahead of him.


Now, to some political implications.

As someone could have read in first post (read quote), Djindic was not a perfect.

He egerly wanted to perform reforms, break remaining parts of Milosevic regieme, and do all what in needed to become close to EU and America. That's what made in popular by foregn leaders.

But, he was also politican greedy for power (on the other hand, aren't all of them?) He tried strictly to control DOS (coalition which won fight against Milosevic), which lead to spilt of Democratic Party of Serbia (Kostunica) out of DOS. Sometimes he didn't used complty legal and constintutial means to do that.
That made his Democracy Party antangonistic to Kostunica's Democracy Party of Serbia, since Kostunica was more legalist in nature.

Now, instead of solving the crisis with preliminary elections, he tried to keep "his seat" until 2004 when regular elections would be made (by very caerful political manipulations), since he doubt that his party would won at this moment, because of some unpopular moves done by him (managing of reforms, Milsoevic extradiction, etc...)

This lead to bickering and stagantion in economical sense, beacuse many important laws are not made, which lead to lower foreign inverstitions.

Now what can happen next?
I assume that preliminary elections are more possibile. Djindjic was main forced opposed to that.

By his death, his party has weakened, which would diminish its political role (since most other party officals are not so good politician and charismatic as Djindjic).
G17plus lead by Labus (was also part of DOS unitil failure in presidental elections last year) and Kostunica's DSS, would probably increase in power.
G17plus is more liberal and reformist oriented, while Kostuca party is more conservative and legalistic in nature.
There is also Serbian Radical Party lead by nationalist Seselj (who voluntirely has "gone to Hague"), which increased in power during last presidential elections last year. But, since they leader in now gone, they won't be as big factor as before (and people are really tired of nationalistic movements).

Obviously, there will not be elections before emergency state is removed (or is right world "martial low"?)

Now, curretly, primary suspects for assasination is a criminal group called Zemun's clan.
The real problem with this group was that in shady 90'ties with shady polititians, there was a need for some shady people which were on the other side of the law.

Unfortunately, even after 5th October (when Milosevis was overtrown), thse people still had some power, mainly because after Milosevic there was still some need for shady people.

But the real trouble begin when it's deciced that there is no more need for such people.

Then they've gone "on bezerk", which unfortunatly lead to murder of Prime Minister.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Straybow
By "Columbians" you mean the Shining Path and other terrorist groups?

Do all the brown folks look the same to you or something? Shining Path is in Peru...

[KrazyHorse]

The AUC, the Columbian Army and to a lesser extent the FARC are the terrorists that inhabit Columbia.

[Fidel]

we had internet outage so i could not come here earlier and post. i am not surprised to see that most of the discussions in this post were BS, typical 'who will run the protectorate' thing. no wonder balkan always ends up a bloody mess

i was really shocked yesterday, but i tried to somehow imagine a way in which this could help forward. people here suddenly feel a great miss. one of the reasons is that djindjic was really very clever and able. the other, more prosaic is that he was very 'present' in the media, therefore people will miss not seeing him anymore.

on the other hand, we were not really aware of his abilities until he took on the PM seat. so my guess is, someone will eventually have to fill his shoes. i hope for the best.

as you can imagine, they immediately started lionizing him in the media, those same media who were accusing him of all things imaginable. he was a shrewd politician, very capable of tactical maneuvres, but it is his disrespect for any institution that presents an obstacle to his ideas that finally brought us to situation where we have acting President, acting PM and President of Parliament who is a figurehead.

All this sad, I was his supporter, if not always for his means, then for his goals - and I felt that underneath all the power politics, he was really pushing us forward. I only hope that they catch (or shoot, for all i care), all of the perpetrators.

a really incredible thing is that i saw, among the accused, a man i almost bought a flat from this november. go figure...

[JCG]

A Colombia threadjack, in this thread of all places? Sigh...No thank you.

My single comment on that: Funny how some are quick to display certain facts, but just as quick to hide/conveniently overlook many of the others, not to mention about 1/2 of the context too.
But then again, it could simply be that what some of you know about Colombia is just as much as what I know about North Korea....or Canada even.


Back to the topic:
Very bad news for the people of Serbia, but perhaps this assassination shows that there is still a long way to go before they can be completely left to their own devices. Still, that may have been part of the problem too....All that half-hearted international meddling in Serbian/Balkan affairs hasn't done much good nor led to lasting stability yet, from the looks of things.

[Bereta_Eder]

LaRusso, who do you think got him?

Was it just the mafia, or someone else behind it?
could it have been some nationalist fraction?

[South killer]

Now, now you folks do need looking after every now and then. All it takes is us looking the other way and then all the sudden we've got Argintines squatting in the Falklands...

If you don't remember well, the invasion of the falklands/malvinas was done by a military junta that USA helped to get to power. (the same as you did in Chile with pinochet, in Irak with Hussein, in Cuba with Batista and in many other places)

Both Argentina and England have very good reasons to claim falkland's/malvinas sovereignity (sp?) (although argentines were originally living there and where driven out by an american war ship). i ll say we divide the archipielago in 2 equal part .

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


At least we don't lock people up and torture them, calling them "unlawful combatants."

Of course not, you just stick them in a factory and use them for free labor.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by South killer


If you don't remember well, the invasion of the falklands/malvinas was done by a military junta that USA helped to get to power. (the same as you did in Chile with pinochet, in Irak with Hussein, in Cuba with Batista and in many other places)

Hey that rings a bell

back to topic, that assassination was pretty bad because despite for some shortcomings this man from the looks of it was determined to lead Serbia to serious reforms.

That was the 2nd attack on his life you know.

It succeeded

ANyway on the 1st attack on his life, afterwards he said:
(not exact quote - the gist of it)

"those that think that by killing me they can stop the reforms and the democracy will discover that those will go on"

[raghar]

His words after firsta attempt. It was wishfull thinking. I think he more mindlesly copied from democracy than he tried to do for Serbia. You know one of people that West idealised into big for democracy leaders and they all faild. He was more or less like symbol for west than someone who could really improve Serbia.

[edit few words]

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Well that is major suckage... at least to me he looked as the best political bet Serbia had from all current choices... he was not perfect by any means (as if any politician is), but sureley the best bet the country had... now it remains to be seen who will fill the void, but anyone who stepps in his shoes will have a hard job to steer the country out of the present state into a safe and prosperous place for politicians and for people.