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Location: Home > Serbian Case > About Otpor > Otpor & Opposition
OTPOR AND THE OPPOSITION
From competition and misunderstanding
to functional coalition of efforts and actions
Contents:
On phases in the relationship with the opposition by Srdja Popovic
Well, I would, I would divide that in three phases. So in first phase, they - we were, you know, they liked us. A group of kids playing, so on. On second hand they were really worried because we were filling the political space with, you know, like cancer. Filling all the blanks for which they didn't - wasn't able to fill, giving all the answers to all the issues people asked, to which they were not clever or competent enough to give. And having the strongest network among the opposition parties in Serbia , physical network, physically coverage of the ground.
And in the last phase, we were partners. Generally with no love between the opposition parties and Otpor, clear, but you know, we have gotten more mature, they have gotten more mature in that relationship. And we say, okay, we are doing a big job and we are risking the whole thing and we are doing the dirty work in this revolution. And we are going to be arrested, we are going to be tortured, we are going to sweep the ground so they can go in after us with their positive messages to win a voice. We are going to prove that Milosevic is finished, and we know that nobody is going to give us a medal after that. But history is, you know, being an important part of the history of this people, and of this country, and positive Serbian image abroad, is quite a medal of itself.
And that partnership relation was based on a necessity. Because we produced a strong movement and strong ideology which gave one of two necessary responses when you are removing one system. So we have given the formula which will remove Milosevic; we put all that discontent and all of the pain of the people, and all of the hopes of the people, and we focused it, we had a magical formula to turn it into action. But we still need people to sit in offices. We knew that our battle will be in vain, and will be probably finished as a nonviolent revolution if somebody doesn't remove Milosevic at elections. So they were necessary in that battle. They were necessary part of that battle.
We didn't do it. The people did it. We helped people to learn how. Gave them the story, gave them the ideology, gave them the slogan and victimizing ourself - converting new people, and giving that movement a - a fuel for its engine. But generally what we did was educated the people all the time, all the time, all the time, so the people were trained to remove Milosevic.
And we are speaking to different people from abroad that we consider Otpor the material proof - and the situation in Serbia , well the Otpor as its most obvious part, most transparent part - that non violent methods are far superior than sanctions, bombing, whatever international community did here to remove Milosevic as they officially said. So what we would like to do is to use our spare time in films, broadcasts, papers, documents, abstracts, publications, nonviolent institutes, and so on and so on - to say we are offering ourselves as proof that nonviolence is far superior to violence. We did it against the violent dictator in an absolute violent environment. So we proved that nonviolence works. That nonviolent actions and bravery and personal example and training of people and organizing the movement, and ideology of the movement, and the 198 methods of nonviolent resistance that Sharp mentions in his book - it really works. And it worked here.
On working with the opposition: By Ivan Andric
We had many connections, personal connections with opposition. We do not have any connections with the regime, ex-regime. We have some betrayers among them, who were sending us e-mails at some very key points in the campaign, to say something about their strategy.
But we had connections with opposition in - I can say it was some kind of technical way. For example, it was very dangerous to distribute our material in Serbia . So, we used opposition cars, and we distributed our material with their, for example, posters in the same truck with our posters. And you have on top their posters, and when police stop the car, they see, for example, SPO, Vuk Draskovic's party posters, and they say, "OK." But a whole bunch of posters under it were our posters. So, we have that kind of cooperation.
And I must say that some people from the opposition who are not leaders, you know, but some, you can call it staff - key organizational people in all positions helped us a lot. We used their stores, for example, their trucks, their protections, you know. At our concerts, we used their security. And those kind of connections, which are not in public, like party symbols or something. We used everything which we didn't have. We didn't have party symbols, you know, Every kind of help. But we helped them more, I think. We had the biggest campaign. And at the end of the day, it was a campaign for them. It's a campaign for Kostunica.
On the opposition and political parties: by Ivan Andric
We had all those efforts all the time from different people. But the atmosphere in Serbia was something like a fake democratic country. And you had the different parties, but you didn't have the atmosphere.
And in the beginning, in the grass roots, you need a clear field for the political parties. And here, that was not the case. And so the political parties were not in a serious place. They didn't have, for example, controllers [monitors] at the polling stations until now. Maybe they [the opposition] were stronger these past ten years than Milosevic, but there was no one to count the votes. Milosevic counted the votes.
Now they have controllers, people who are counting the votes at the polling stations. And that's one point. And you had 16 or 20, different important political parties. And when you have 20 leaders, it's a very small possibility to get them united. There are 20 different programs, 20 different political interests, 20 different points of view. And they didn't have any chance to succeed until now.
We had one major [opposition] political party, which was Vuk Draskovic's party. And they were not in a coalition with the others. But the people finally understood that they must vote for the bigger party - vote against Milosevic.
I'm just explaining the political scene, and besides that, you have Otpor. That's how I see the political scene. And Otpor is independent because it doesn't have its own political interests involved in elections, to be elected, first of all. So, Otpor is something which is covering the whole scene. It's bigger or wider than the political parties. Because you can be a member of Otpor and you can be a member of a party at the same time. And there's not any kind of collision.
So Otpor needed to stay clean, but only in the eyes of the public. We were very connected to the opposition. But to stay clean and to cooperate in public only with the united opposition. You know, not with the parties themselves, but only with the united opposition. And that was the big message. When you are sitting in a meeting with the united opposition, it's like you are supporting them. And it's a message to the people that you're saying you can vote for them. But you can't vote for the different parties. The only way to beat Milosevic is to vote for all of them. That was the message to the people.
At the same time, we had a message for them, for the united opposition, that they must stay together. Because that's the only way to win - to be better than Milosevic. And they stayed together. I'm not saying it's because of us. I think that they personally, finally, understood that there is much more than to be an opposition leader in Serbia . We have so many other things. I think they finally understood that it's better to rule the country or the government than to be in the opposition.
On working with the opposition vs. working with Otpor: by Ivan Andric
You know, we have some arguments about some things in the DOS coalition, you know, some things that were not so bright. There were lots of different interests in their campaign. I think it's very bad for the campaign to have different interests, and, for example, to create a group of 15 people - I think it's very stupid and idiotic. Because, on every issue you hear at least 15 ideas. At some point, we were hearing, I don't know, 30 ideas for something, and we could never get a consensus about something.
I stepped out of it and came back to Otpor. And it's much easier to do things for Otpor, because the idea is clear. You have a clear enemy. We had a clear enemy, you know, personalized. It's one man, no one likes him. He's a dictator. It's very easy to do things for that - to make, for example, a TV ad. It's very easy. It only has to be against Milosevic in some funny and creative way.
(Excerpted from an interview with Steve York: Belgrade , November 30, 2000.)
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