Milosevic Loyalists Struggle to Keep Jobs

Bojan Boljcic was, until last week, Slobodan Milosevic’s arbiter of culture. As the anchor of shows on state-run television about stage, screen and literary figures, the 43-year-old novelist had some say about which ones could be mentioned on the air and which could not.

So when a popular uprising overwhelmed the TV studios, parliament and other state institutions last Thursday, many Serbs--especially blacklisted artists--were astonished to see Boljcic seize the airwaves. “Dear spectators,” he announced to the nation, “this is the New Radio-Television Serbia, transmitting in a beautiful atmosphere of freedom.”

Boljcic’s eleventh-hour switch of loyalty and rush to proclaim it on TV ahead of his colleagues was only the start of a battle for control of RTS, the giant network that was the ousted Yugoslav dictator’s much-despised mouthpiece in Serbia, the country’s main republic.

The battle pits Milosevic loyalists, scurrying to embrace the once-scorned democrats, against a group of independent-minded journalists who were fired from the network in the 1990s and are now filtering back.

Similar skirmishes are underway in state-run companies, banks and other institutions across Serbia as striking workers demand the resignations of bosses installed under Milosevic. The struggle for RTS is paramount because its broadcasts are the only ones seen throughout the republic, giving it an unparalleled ability to shape opinion.

The outcome will hinge in part on whether new Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica’s unwieldy 18-party coalition, which still calls itself the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, tries to dictate its views or instead promotes free expression over the state-controlled network.

Most nights in the past week, the network has been openly partisan. A fresh cast of inexperienced newscasters, who smile a lot more than the old ones, fill air time with the pronouncements of politicians who were rarely seen on the network during the Milosevic years.

But the balance of competing interests inside the sprawling studios on the southern edge of this capital city is still in flux. Last week’s uprising, which left the network’s downtown headquarters burned and looted, has caused upheaval and confusion among its 7,000 employees.

Scores of executives and senior journalists have left on their own, including Dragoljub Milanovic, the network director. He had been beaten by the mob that stormed the headquarters last Thursday after key RTS employees joined the anti-Milosevic revolt, went on strike and shut down the transmitters.

But the “strike committee” now running RTS faces resistance from 30 other journalists and technicians who were asked Wednesday to go away for two months, without formal suspensions. Among those refusing was Staka Novkovic, an infamous monotone newscaster since the pre-1980s era of longtime Communist strongman Josip Broz Tito.

“My job was only to read the news handed to me by the journalists,” she protested to the newspaper Novosti. “I live from my wages and belong to no political party.”

At the same time, the committee invited the hundreds who have been dismissed since 1993 to return to work. Some rushed to the studios Wednesday, embracing old colleagues and angling to take over prestigious jobs from the party loyalists who had supplanted them.

With most of their computers destroyed by the fire, writers struggle on electric typewriters to churn out copy for the evening newscasts, which reach 70% of Serbia’s viewers.

In many cities and towns across the republic, anti-Milosevic mayors have assumed political control over local RTS affiliates and their newscasts, diminishing the network’s power.

At the center of the upheaval is Gordana Susa, a respected independent TV producer and former RTS executive brought in by the strike committee to run the network’s central news operation. She admits to being overwhelmed by the job and on the verge of quitting.

Susa has clashed with anti-Milosevic politicians and her own superiors by trying to focus her news-oriented talk shows on nonpartisan experts, such as human rights and constitutional lawyers, rather than on leaders of Kostunica’s coalition. During Tuesday evening’s newscast, she fielded a telephone call from one such leader demanding air time.

“This is the old Communist mentality,” she said after hanging up. “For more than a decade, RTS was Milosevic’s most evil tool. If we use it the way he did, he’ll make a comeback in the next election.”

Newspapers and radio talk shows are hearing complaints from viewers who agree. In a piece on a Serbian parliament debate Tuesday, RTS aired sound bites only from members of Kostunica’s coalition while voicing over less-favored speakers with a reporter’s unflattering comments.

“People are tired of listening to [opposition figure] Vuk Draskovic,” the reporter said while the Serbian Renewal Party leader, who had refused to join Kostunica’s electoral alliance, was addressing parliament.

Zarko Korac, a leading strategist for Kostunica, broke with individual party leaders in his coalition and criticized the network Tuesday for its bias. “It personally sickens me,” he told the independent Radio B2-92. “We want to hear criticism of us. We are seeking truly open news media.”

RTS reacted by shifting the balance on Wednesday’s evening news. It aired an interview with Borka Vucic, the fallen regime’s leading banker, who denied allegations of financial malfeasance, and a statement by pro-Milosevic parties critical of the worker seizures of state-owned businesses.

The network is divided on how hard to dig into Serbian atrocities in Kosovo province and other human rights abuses by the Milosevic regime.

“It’s not that somebody is stopping us,” said Vera Rankovic, who is back at RTS seven years after being fired and who favors such reporting. “But it’s hard in a matter of a week to change lifelong habits, because we never had free press, even before Milosevic.”

“People have suffered too much under Milosevic,” said Petar Lazovic, a fired RTS sportscaster now back as one of two evening news anchors. “Our preference is to focus more on the future, the better future we hope for, and not all those terrible pictures that made us Serbs the pariahs of the world.”