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Journalism of Courage
Belgrade, Dec 26: Prime Minister-elect of Serbia Zoran Djindjic has said one of his new government’s priorities will be to bring to justice the former president, Slobodan Milosevic.
Djindjic was speaking in an exclusive BBC interview the day after elections in which his reformist coalition swept away the last vestiges of political power held by Milosevic and his Socialist Party.
The extremist radical party won 8.5 per cent or 23 mandates. The Nationalist Party of Serbian Unity received 5.3 per cent or 14 seats. Other parties failed to win the necessary five per cent hurdle in Saturday’s election.
Djindjic said Milosevic would face charges of corruption and abuse of power and could later answer to war crimes allegations.
‘‘We have even now in the newspapers enough evidence to start with the investigation about his abuses of power, and I think it will happen in January, and he will face the justice in serbia,’’ Djindjic said.
‘‘People wouldn’t accept to give him amnesty for what he has done.’’The new Serbian government should be in position by January 15 and it would immediately begin with reforms, Djindjic said.
In an interview with yesterday’s daily Blic, Djindjic said he would announce the cabinet ‘‘soon’’.
‘‘The parliament would be formed within seven or eight days and the largest party in the parliament would propose the Prime Minister to president of Serbia’’ Milan Milutinovic, he said.
New economic laws, planned for the first month of the new government, should allow the country to ‘‘function normally’’, Djindjic said. In his words, priorities include an end violence in the ethnically volatile southern Serbia, where an Albanian guerrilla group holds positions in the demilitarize strip of land bordering Kosovo.
