Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise - Indymedia

104 WESTERN YUGOSLAVIA REACTS
Ministry of Information. 28 People in the western republics were taken aback and
never forgot it. Marković seemed to think, however, that the train of events in
Kosovo had run its course and that he could scarcely perform his job without
good contact with Milošević. This may well be the case, but Marković should
have been more careful about his behavior. While his relations with Kadijević
remained tolerable for a long time, his relations with Milošević and the other
Serbian leaders became shaky again in early summer 1989. This occurred at the
moment when Marković, as a sign of his resolve to combat inflation, wanted to
stop the uncontrolled increase of credits in clearing dollars for exports to the
Soviet Union, above all from Serbia. 29
People now no longer understood why Marković held back for so long from
taking comprehensive measures while the situation in the country became
steadily worse almost by the week. In mid-July Deputy Prime Minister Pregl (a
Slovene) told me that the previous governments had collapsed in connection with
their anti-inflation programs. 30 Pregl called for specific measures, all of which
were suited to containing inflation. Prices and imports were liberalized by
degrees; the duties were moderated, facilitating imports. The government took
better control of the money supply, and tried to hold the increase in the money
supply to 30 per cent less than the rate of inflation. Pregl notes also that the
distorted structure of prices and wages remained an issue with which the
government had to grapple. This had to be corrected, but this very correction
would create a new round of inflation. Pregl also wanted to restrict the damaging
influences of the local authorities on the work of “their” enterprises. The army
had agreed to be content with a share of 4.5 per cent of the social product. Pregl
conceded that the government’s measures adopted up to then had encountered
resistance, especially in Serbia, because people could not give up the idea that
the market economy would work to the detriment of the less developed parts of
the country. In Serbia, some measures had been adopted which put money into
the hands of the state rather than into a free economy, as in the loan for the
“rebuilding” of Serbia announced by Milošević.
Only on 18 December 1989 did Marković present his program for currency
reform to the parliament, together with associated measures. A new dinar was to
be established, with a stable exchange, pegged at seven dinars to the DM. It was
anticipated that that would entail some hardships, especially for the eastern parts
of the country. Some $ 150 million had been allocated to ease these hardships.
Marković’s program elicited some expressions of displeasure in Slovenia,
because Marković had included in his program some new proposals for
constitutional reform which were seen as “centralistic” in Ljubljana. Slovenia
was, moreover, subject to a kind of Serbian economic boycott. 31
The Serbian rejection was clear and total. “Serbia does not support the
government’s policies,” a headline of the Belgrade daily Politika announced on
20 December 1989. The paper published the resolution of all three houses of the
Serbian parliament. Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Miroslav Mišković provided
some reasons for Serbian opposition, under the headline, “Why Serbia is Against