(2/2 - fine)

Today, more than ever, our young people are
going abroad to seek employment.

Tuitions have been imposed on high school.
Enormous tuitions have been imposed at
universities. In science and culture, in
publishing, in the media and in institutes
those who are 'politically acceptable'
dominate.

The new authorities say they value expertise
and professionalism. That does not prevent
them from appointing people who are
untrained and unable to perform basic duties
to ministerial, managerial and diplomatic
posts. For these rulers, the Supreme
principles are obedience, membership in the
'right' parties and nepotism.

Unprecedented pressure is being applied to
the judiciary as well as Orwellian control
of the media. Judges are exposed to the most
severe pressures and blackmail. If they do
not hand down the decisions DOS desires they
lose their jobs. If they lose the jobs, they
are forbidden to practice law as attorneys,
their only profession.

The total redistribution of our country's
foreign policy interests is carried out in
such a way that these are completely
surrendered to the West, e.g. NATO. In the
politics of the country, Anglo-Saxon and
German factors dominate, while each has its
direct proponents in the top leadership of
the state. Relations with other countries,
especially with those who extended support,
cooperation and solidarity to our country
and people when it was most difficult, are
completely forsaken or reduced to a mere
formality.

At the same time these authorities are
preparing the internationalization of
autonomism and separatism in Vojvodina. It
seems that what is apparent and completely
clear to every sane person is not clear or
known to the highest representatives of DOS.

The state is facing disintegration. People
do not know who is ruling the country. The
Constitution and laws are simply not
applied.

The President of the federal state, Vojislav
Kostunica, astonishes the Yugoslav and
foreign publics by claiming he was not
informed about fateful decisions. He
publicly asserts that a coup d'etat has been
executed by the republican Prime Minister
Zoran Djindjic, but that does not prevent
Kostunica from sitting with Djindjic at the
same table immediately after said coup, and
cooperating with him as if nothing had
happened. As if a coup d'etat is an everyday
occurrence in democracies. Prime Minister
Djindjic publicly admits that he has usurped
the domain of the Federal State. He only
complains in the German 'Die Spiegel' that,
while he did 'honestly' what was requested
of him the West is late with the promised
payments!

President Kostunica and Prime Minister
Djindjic are publicly contesting who would
have personal control over the Army of
Yugoslavia (AoY). Some leaders of DOS are
trying to dismantle AoY, to weaken it and
its morale since that is NATO's wish. They
are confronting the Army and police. They
are threatening a new wave of political
persecution and more extraditions of our
citizens to NATO.

It is clear that such authorities may not
suffer a long existence. Even those who
financed and organized DOS did not plan to
keep them around for long. But, for the
citizens of this country the question is:
what shall remain of the country, of the
state and of our economic resources after
such authorities leave? What will new
authorities have left at their disposal?

Dear guests,

The SPS is a party of free, creative and
courageous people, organized on the ideas of
social justice, multiparty parliamentary
democracy, mixed economy, freedom and
equality. Within the Party and its
leadership there is much room for different
opinions, especially on methods of
implementing the program's options.

Of course, full internal democracy in
working out political positions requires
total party discipline and responsibility
for public confirmation and implementation
of agreed-on political positions. All
members are subject to such Party
discipline, especially leaders of the SPS.
This basic principle is important to any
political party in all conditions. When
applied to a Party like the SPS, that by its
program covers the entire political space
from the center to the far left, to a Party
that is exposed to political persecution
never before recorded in the political
history of Serbia, then the strengthening of
unity and the honoring of party discipline
has the greatest and most fateful
importance. Our unity shall grow from
strength to strength in relation to
strengthening the Party's activities based
on implementing our Program's options.

>From time to time in the public the idea
that it is necessary to change the SPS
Program is put forward. It is presented in
the form of 'well intentioned" suggestions,
advocacy of 'respect for new realities',
'modernization', 'engaging with' the private
sector, with the intelligentsia, with the
youth, and so on. Actually, the real motives
of such 'well intentioned' theses and
suggestions lie somewhere else.

Allow me, in respect of this, to refresh
your memory on one position from the SPS
Program:

"In its basic programmatic principles, the
Socialist Party of Serbia draws from the
development of socialist ideas in our
country and throughout the world, as well as
from the generally acknowledged positive
results of the democratic political practice
of socialist forces, especially in Western
Europe and from our own development since
the Second World War. Part of its political
and moral strength is drawn from the results
of the all-peoples' democratic and patriotic
movement in Serbia at the end of the 1980s.
Before the changes in Eastern Europe, this
mass struggle of ordinary people supported
the policy of democratization, national
emancipation and socialist reforms. It was
that mass movement and that policy that
showed the need to establish the Socialist
Party of Serbia".

This is why the SPS was and remains a strong
political party widely accepted in all
social structures and among all generations.
Its influence and importance have grown
because general developments within the last
ten months have caused even deeper concern
among the vast majority of citizens
regardless of their political views, their
age, or the party to which they might
belong.

It should be noted at this point that when
our opponents say the SPS should change its
Program, they say so because they are
conscious of the strong historical
foundations of our party. That bothers them.
They know that these foundations are rooted
in the freedom-loving and humanist spiritual
traditions of our people. They are rooted in
the more than two centuries of development
of socialist thought in Europe and Serbia,
but also in today's concrete circumstances.

When some of our comrades say the Program
should be changed, that indicates that they
do not understand what in the historical
sense is most advantageous for our Party.
For their sake and the sake of the general
public, it should be clearly stated what
programmatic and political potentials of our
Program have not been sufficiently utilized
and what programmatic oversights have now
mostly been overcome.

Why exactly have our people and our party
become the target of most brutal, most
illegal and most dishonorable methods of
contemporary imperial policy?

Above all because we implemented in an
authentic manner democratic and economic
reforms. We were first in Eastern Europe to
commence with reforms. However, we worked in
the interest of our people, and not
neo-colonial power centers. Ine the late
1980s we took power away from the corrupted
elements who had lost touch with the people.
During the 5th of October putsch, these same
elements, dregs of the old League of
Communists, who had betrayed its basic
principles, came back to power either
directly or through their children, anxious
to regain their never-forgotten privileges
and commissions and to impose authoritarian
rule by means of lawlessness, crime and
treason.

By defending national dignity and
sovereignty, by defending what are in fact
the most progressive European principles, as
embodied in its Program, the Socialist Party
of Serbia has led the nation along the only
possible path. This is the path of
preserving and developing economic potential
as the basis for social justice and
spiritual development, to renew and develop
integrative connections with our neighbors.

In that way we would enter the European
Home, not the pantry in the European
economic courtyard.

The SPS has not had problems in its Program
or in its basic political organization, but
in the practical implementation of its
Program.

Our program opposes the transformation of
the economic and financial power of any
individuals into political power. First, a
Party of the Left, born of the people,
should not allow arrogant and immodest
displays by its better-off members.
Secondly, the party and government, once we
regain it, should not be influenced by
careerists, profiteers and those who seek
shelter from the storm, nor give power to
forces without popular support.

These are lessons we have learned quite
well. Those who put their personal interests
over the general good have either left our
Party and joined the powers-that-be to
preserve their fortunes or else we ourselves
have removed them. To them and others that
would wish to emulate them, there is no
longer a place in the Socialist Party of
Serbia. In addition, we have decided that we
shall finally dispense with ill-founded
pre-election coalitions. Every party should
have power only in proportion to its real
popular support.

The position of the SPS was and remains
clear: the preservation of the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia, as a sovereign and
independent state, a community of equal
citizens and republics of Serbia and
Montenegro, is an expression of their
historical interests, the precondition of
their independence and modern economic
development. Struggle against separatism,
terrorism and organized international crime,
and a stronger drive for regional economic
integration are unthinkable without the
preservation of the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia.

The last 10 months of totalitarianism,
lawlessness, persecution and darkness,
though difficult, have helped our party in
many respects.

We understood where we were mistaken and
also where our unused potentials lie.

We paid the price of opportunism towards
those who were with us only for their own
benefit because the SPS was in power.

We understand the importance of daily
contacts with the people and respect for
their desires.

Enriched with this knowledge and experience
the SPS shall strengthen its relations with
all the social strata acting as a factor of
unity that contributes creativity, wisdom,
energy and �lan for the benefit of general
progress. Openness and responsibility shall
be expressed above all towards the
membership and sympathizers who stood fast
with the policy and Program of the SPS when
this was most difficult. At the same time
that shall be the most important criteria in
selecting nominees for electoral lists.

We owe it to the young, not only in words,
but in practice also to give them much wider
possibilities for participation and
influence in the Party's life. They earned
that by their contribution in affirming our
policy and defending its values as well as
in the protests that have taken place within
the last few months.

The Federal Government fell because of the
violation of the state's Constitution and
laws. The SPS deems that in the new
Government there should not be a place for
those directly responsible for the
unconstitutional decree on extradition.

Expressing the mass requests of the citizens
of Serbia, the SPS demands the resignation
of the republican Government that is
responsible for the violation of the
Constitution of Yugoslavia and Serbia, of
the decision of the Federal Constitutional
Court, for usurpation of authority that does
not belong to it, for the abduction and
extradition of Slobodan Milosevic to NATO.

Elections must not be delayed further.

No one should interfere with new elections -
not the US, nor the EU nor Soros nor similar
forces.

The many difficulties we have endured and
struggled with have made us stronger. We are
facing old and new difficulties, challenges
and new possibilities.

If the SPS has been a support for Serbia and
Yugoslavia in defence of the state, of
freedom and of social justice up to now,
then the SPS shall be even more needed in
the future, exactly because those basic
values are even more jeopardized.

In the coming period it is our duty to pay
much more attention to the analysis of
economic and social problems and to
spreading SPS influence among workers, the
people who suffer most due to such problems.

Issues involving agriculture and rural areas
must be approached in a more organized
manner, a manner befitting the Party that
has always had its greatest support in rural
areas.

The intelligentsia is a natural support for
the SPS as a widely based, open Party with a
Left orientation. Even though daily more and
more intellectuals - scientific, cultural
and public workers - accept and support our
positions on actual issues, our actions and
have the same positions regarding the future
of the state and the people, we have to
contribute much more to fully activate that
potential support.

People's energy, stimulated by mass
protests, has to be maintained. The ideas
and requests of people's rallies must be
even more decisively affirmed and struggled
for via parliamentary caucuses, the media,
and through international contacts.

Above all this applies to persistence in
demanding that responsibility be established
for those who violated the Constitution,
laws, moral and international rules in
connection with the abduction of President
Slobodan Milosevic. The vast majority of
Yugoslav people also demand the abolition of
the Hague Tribunal as an extended hand of
NATO. At the same time, this is a demand of
the international public and especially
scientific, cultural and legal
professionals.

For crimes in Yugoslavia the address is
NATO, not the defenders of freedom!

Whatever the intention of its master, until
the Hague 'Tribunal' is abolished it will be
a stage on which the conquering, Imperial
nature of NATO exposes itself.

The Socialist Party of Serbia calls upon all
citizens, all democratic parties and
organizations, all cultural and scientific
institutions to demand early elections, free
democratic life in the country, an end to
dictatorship, a dignified entrance into the
circle of free countries of Europe and the
world, without protectorate and colonial
servility, with belief in its own spiritual
strength and economic and creative
potentials.

Our Party has strength, decisiveness and
enough expert cadres to contribute towards
such a perspective for Serbia and
Yugoslavia.



To join or help this struggle, visit:
http://www.sps.org.yu/ (official SPS website)
http://www.belgrade-forum.org/ (forum for the
world of equals)
http://www.icdsm.org/ (the international
committee to defend Slobodan Milosevic)

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