EDITORIAL
Selling out cheap
Being an imperialist puppet is losing its allure in the
post-Soviet world. Back in the Cold-War days, a faithful
servant of Washington could count on a few decades in office
while robbing the public treasury. Now the world's rulers want
instant compliance, and they want it cheap.
Ask Zoran Djindjic, Serbia's pro-West premier who gained
office in an election financed largely by the imperialists. He
just turned over former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic
to NATO's court in The Hague. Actually, you don't have to ask
Djindjic. He'll tell you anyway.
He complained to the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel on
July 15 that he had expected to receive by August a first
installment of $255 million of the $1.3 billion promised by
international "donors," but had discovered that $183 million of
that would go towards paying off old debts. The remaining $62
million would only be transferred to Belgrade in November at
the earliest.
"That is like giving a seriously ill person medicine when he
is dead. Our crisis months are July, August, September,"
Djindjic told the magazine. "I am losing my credibility and
cannot stabilize the country anymore," he said. "I am seriously
warning the West. If my government falls that would cost the
international community $10 billion."
Djindjic's personal history has included decades of service
to German imperialism and more lately complete obedience to
Washington. His concern that he will lose credibility has some
merit. The latest Yugoslav poll, published in the Belgrade
weekly NIN, shows Djindjic with a miserable 5.5-percent
approval rating.
Perhaps the most significant result of the poll conducted by
this pro-West newspaper is that 56 percent of Yugoslavs opposed
the turnover of Milosevic to The Hague tribunal. His first
statements before the tribunal and to his legal advisers have
shown he aims to resist this star-chamber court run by the NATO
war criminals who bombed his country.
Djindjic has already sold out. He's now finding that in the
imperialists' post-Soviet political world, where lackeyism is
the norm, the price of treachery has dropped considerably.
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