Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise - Indymedia

134 IRRECONCILABLE POSITIONS
and, thus, of the LCY as well. Some attempts to reconstitute the congress and
thereby to save the federal party collapsed because it was utterly impossible to
speak of a Yugoslav party in the absence of both the Slovenes and the Croats.
Even the Macedonians and the Bosnians did not want to have anything to do
with a “rump structure” which would have been under Serbian control and under
the “whip” of the army leadership. 6
The decision for democracy, multi-party system, and free elections was now
irreversible not only in Ljubljana but also in Zagreb. The Slovenian elections had
been set for 8 April, those in Croatia for 22 April 1990. Račan says that some
people in his party had wanted, after the transfer of power in December 1989, to
hold elections “immediately”, after the model of what Milošević had done in
Serbia. This would have reduced the elections to a mere formality, assuring the
communists of victory. But Račan rejected such a maneuver; he stood for
authentic and “fair” elections. 7
As to the question of the election law, Račan says that the majority system
seemed to be the only conceivable option in Croatia because of the complicated
nature of the parliaments at the time. In the federation as well as in the republics,
the parliament always consisted of three houses. One could have introduced a
proportional system for the first chamber, but that solution would have led to new
discussions and delays. Račan says that his party concerned itself rather little
with the elections—perhaps too little—since at that time there was a lot going on
in Yugoslavia generally. The electoral system was worked out by Professor
Smiljko Sokol, an expert hired by the party; it was assumed that he would create
a system which, at the least, would not be disadvantageous for the communist
party. But it was later shown that the majority system worked to the advantage of
the Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ), rather than to that of the
communists, and gave the HDZ a disproportionate majority in the houses of the
parliament. 8
Preparations for the elections did not proceed entirely smoothly; Račan said
that high officers in the army approached him several times and asked him to
cancel the free elections; the army would then assume power in Croatia and
would install him, Račan, as political leader, in Croatia. Račan rejected these
proposals. 9 He did not want to say which officers had contacted him, but
Manolić claims that Kadijević and Brovet at least were involved. 10
The end of the LCY actually hit the army harder than Milošević. The Serbian
leader had been served a defeat, to be sure, but he could always shift the offensive
to another front, as he had done before, for example to the state presidency. For
the army leadership, the end of the LCY and of its central organs signified a
tangible constriction of its political field of action. The army leadership had been
represented in the federal party organs—in the presidium and in the Central
Committee alike; it was not represented in the state presidency. Moreover,
“democratic centralism” did not apply in the organs of state.
The army leadership seemed, in those spring days of 1990, to have nurtured
new intentions of intervening in all of Yugoslavia; the offer to Račan was