Re: <nettime> ICG: Yugoslavia Situation Report #1

[Roberto Verzola <rverzola@phil.gn.apc.org>]

 >Some 30,000 students marched through Belgrade today and are gathering for
 >a rally on the university campus this evening. DOS leaders have called on
 >Serbians from around the country to converge on Belgrade Thursday.
 >Privately, DOS worries about the potential for violence, as the regime has
 >planned counter-demonstrations and a heavy police presence is expected.

In the Philippine case some 15 years ago, it was election cheating
that triggered the downfall of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. His
overthrow represents what might be seen as a model (one among several
of course) of overthrowing dictators:

When the dictator completely lost legitimacy, and the public lost its
fear of martial law and dictatorship, we simply refused to recognize
the power of the existing government, and people started coming out to
the streets. We faced a long and uncertain process of civil
resistance.

What tilted the balance of power was a split in the Philippine
military. A part of the military broke away from the dictator and
switched allegiance to Corazon Aquino, who was widely believed by the
public to have won the elections. In the resulting stand-off (none
among the military felt firing at their erstwhile comrades), some
loyalist units started defecting to the other side, egged on by a
pirate radio station. They were followed by more units, until (as if
each unit was itself voting) an avalanche of defections led to an
untenable situation for the dictator who then fled to Hawaii.

If there's a lesson here for Serbians, it is that they should now
train their persuasive skills on the military and try to split it.
They should also have access to some mass media, perhaps a radio or TV
station, or the Internet might do it today. Once the election winner
acquires a military capability from a major defection, that could be
the real beginning of the end for Milosevic.

But the Serbian people must also take care that Milosevic's
dictatorship is not replaced by a corporate dictatorship under IMF
tutelage.

Roberto Verzola

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net