Kefka
Member
Constitution, Kosovo, and Media Misdirection
by Nebojsa Malic
On Saturday and Sunday, the citizens of Serbia are expected to vote in a plebiscite on the new constitution. In a rare display of political unity, the draft constitution was supported in the parliament by both the government and the opposition parties. However, remnants of the former DOS regime and the "non-governmental" organizations that support them have launched a campaign against the document; these Jacobins are assailing the constitution as "undemocratic," and particularly object to its preamble, which defines occupied Kosovo as an integral part of Serbia.
This, rather than any other feature in the constitution, is the real point of contention between those who seek its passage, and those in Serbia – and elsewhere – who would like to see it fail. Inclusion of Kosovo in the new Serbian constitution complicates the efforts to force Belgrade into giving up the territory NATO occupied in 1999 on behalf of ethnic Albanian separatists.
What Bothers the New York Times
The New York Times, a stalwart supporter of NATO's 1999 war and a pillar of Empire's Official Truth, launched a sloppy attack on the new Serbian constitution on Monday, calling the document "faulty."
Despite mentioning "critics" of the constitution at least five times in the article, the Times' Nicholas Wood comes up with only two: Omer Hadzimerovic, a regional judge, and Goran Jesic, mayor of a small town near Belgrade. There is not a single mention of the constitution's loudest critics: DOS leftovers, such as Cedomir Jovanovic, Zarko Korac, Vladan Batic, Nenad Canak, and their micro-parties; or the Western-backed "human rights" groups and quasi-NGOs that endorse their political agendas.
It's impossible to verify some of the claims the unnamed "critics" are making. The text of the proposed constitution is publicly available (found here, in Serbian, as a .pdf file), but the document itself has 206 articles (!) in nine sections. For the sake of comparison, the United States Constitution has seven articles and 27 amendments. Much of the language in the proposed Serbian constitution is vague, subject to external definition (what are "European values," anyway?), and rather than providing a cornerstone for future legislation actually depends on it to be functional. In short, it's a constitution of a decidedly modern, social-democratic welfare state, whose guiding spirit was not God, John Locke, or even Serbian tradition, but the bloated bureaucracy of the EU.
http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=9918
by Nebojsa Malic
On Saturday and Sunday, the citizens of Serbia are expected to vote in a plebiscite on the new constitution. In a rare display of political unity, the draft constitution was supported in the parliament by both the government and the opposition parties. However, remnants of the former DOS regime and the "non-governmental" organizations that support them have launched a campaign against the document; these Jacobins are assailing the constitution as "undemocratic," and particularly object to its preamble, which defines occupied Kosovo as an integral part of Serbia.
This, rather than any other feature in the constitution, is the real point of contention between those who seek its passage, and those in Serbia – and elsewhere – who would like to see it fail. Inclusion of Kosovo in the new Serbian constitution complicates the efforts to force Belgrade into giving up the territory NATO occupied in 1999 on behalf of ethnic Albanian separatists.
What Bothers the New York Times
The New York Times, a stalwart supporter of NATO's 1999 war and a pillar of Empire's Official Truth, launched a sloppy attack on the new Serbian constitution on Monday, calling the document "faulty."
Despite mentioning "critics" of the constitution at least five times in the article, the Times' Nicholas Wood comes up with only two: Omer Hadzimerovic, a regional judge, and Goran Jesic, mayor of a small town near Belgrade. There is not a single mention of the constitution's loudest critics: DOS leftovers, such as Cedomir Jovanovic, Zarko Korac, Vladan Batic, Nenad Canak, and their micro-parties; or the Western-backed "human rights" groups and quasi-NGOs that endorse their political agendas.
It's impossible to verify some of the claims the unnamed "critics" are making. The text of the proposed constitution is publicly available (found here, in Serbian, as a .pdf file), but the document itself has 206 articles (!) in nine sections. For the sake of comparison, the United States Constitution has seven articles and 27 amendments. Much of the language in the proposed Serbian constitution is vague, subject to external definition (what are "European values," anyway?), and rather than providing a cornerstone for future legislation actually depends on it to be functional. In short, it's a constitution of a decidedly modern, social-democratic welfare state, whose guiding spirit was not God, John Locke, or even Serbian tradition, but the bloated bureaucracy of the EU.
http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=9918