The Student Movement of Serbia unveiled its Memorandum on Kosovo. If it repeats the same positions as V. Kostunica, where is its relevance?
By: Veton Surroi
1.
Dr. Vojislav Kostunica can feel fulfilled, his experiment worked, a new generation of nationalists has emerged on the scene that will continue the lost battles.
The new generation of nationalists, the Student Movement in the Blockade, announced themselves with the Memorandum “on Kosovo and Metohija” in which the first point is “Kosovo and Metohija are an inalienable and integral part of the Republic of Serbia” with the following explanation: “This fact is not only a constitutional category, but also a historical and moral imperative that is not subject to negotiation in essence.
“Preserving Serbia’s constitutional order in the area of Kosovo and Metohija is the foundation of the survival of the Serbian state and a guarantee for a just peace in the region.”
Dr. Kostunica had a rich life cycle. He was one of the young lawyers expelled from the Faculty in the seventies (precisely because of disagreements with the freedoms that were granted to Kosovo at that time), he was a translator of the “Federalist Papers”, the constitutional debates of the fathers of American democracy, part of the democratic movements in Serbia after the fall of communism and would have stayed at home with his cats (urban legend said there were 17 of them) reading books and writing about the permanent injustices that are done to the Serbian people if the chance had not presented itself that his name from a nationalist would be selected as the best candidate to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic in the 2001 elections. And, his paths were opened even more when a few bullets blocked the path of his then ruling partner, Mr. Djindjic. At that time, Dr. Kostunica and Serbia were at a historic crossroads: to follow the European path and enter the EU together with Croatia (as many people in the EU wanted) or to follow the beaten path of Slobodan Milosevic.
Kostunica chose the latter, insisting that Kosovo is legally part of Serbia, harboring resentment against reality, legal science, Serbia, and everyone else except the cats, to whom he turned.
2.
A quarter of a century later, the children who grew up with Kostunica’s anger produced a document that says the same things he said, with one difference. The students, and Kostunica would not allow this because it would be a warmongering, used poetic, or pathetic, language, and there was room for “the battlefield washed with blood”, and “the spiritual horizon from which even today the churches of Prizren, the narthex of Peja, the gold of Banjska and the pillars of the arches of Graçanica illuminate us”.
But, with an added dose of diplomacy, they repeated what Kostunica said, before turning to the cats: “Serbia must cooperate actively and constructively with all relevant international organizations, recognizing them as inevitable partners in finding the most adequate and sustainable solution within the framework of its Constitution.”
3.
It may seem like a youthful obsession that a quarter of a century after Kostunica, a generation of young people is being offered in Serbia that says that if it wins the next elections, it will cooperate with the world so that the world adapts to the Serbian Constitution.
So, yes, young people sometimes have the illusion that the world revolves around them, and this may have happened to Serbian students. The problem is continuity, because throughout this century and even the last century, a significant part of Serbian politics has been designed with the idea that the Western Balkans and the politics around it should adapt to the Serbian axis; security, insecurity, integrations, disintegrations, development, peace and war, and everything else depends on Serbia.
The students here are complicit in the mistake.
It is completely irrelevant to Kosovo, the Western Balkans and Europe that the protesting students believe that Kosovo is part of the territory of the Republic of Serbia. That all of them – Kosovo, the Western Balkans and Europe – function just fine despite this belief and would function just as well if the student movement declared that they believe that the Earth is flat.
But, at the same time, by not creating relevance for Kosovo, the Western Balkans and Europe, the Student Movement risks its own relevance. If a quarter of a century after Kostunica, a new generation emerges that repeats his postulates, and his postulates were to create continuity of Milosevic’s policy by other means, then what is the added value of the movement?
In the absence of this question, and the answer to it, students risk figuratively sending Kostunica away, in the care of cats.
4.
Throughout this century, the interlocutors of the various powers of Serbia have tried to interpret their positions and actions as if they were coded messages. All of them have repeated the desire or ambition for Serbia to be part of Europe. After each repetition, the evidence for this has been increasingly smaller: Serbia is further from Europe today than it was when negotiations for membership in the European Union began.
Instead of projecting foreign desires, perhaps for all who try to understand Serbia it would be worth accepting things as they are. So, no, majority Serbia does not see itself as part of Europe. And, no, the fact that there is a student movement against the government of this Serbia and with attitudes of this Serbia does not automatically qualify it without evidence to be a vision of the European future.