Diana Johnstone
5th October, 2010
On October 5, 2000, the regular presidential election process in Yugoslavia was boisterously interrupted by what Western media described as a “democratic revolution” against the “dictator”, president Slobodan Milosevic. In reality, the “dictator” was about to enter the run-off round of the Yugoslav presidential election which he appeared likely to lose to the main opposition candidate, Vojislav Kostunica. Rather than support the democratic electoral process, the United States trained and incited activists to take to the streets and replace it by a televised spectacle of popular uprising. Probably, the scenarists modeled this show on the equally stage-managed overthrow of the Ceaucescu couple in Rumania at Christmas 1989, which ended in their murder following one of the shortest kangaroo court trials in history. For the generally ignorant world at large, being overthrown in an uprising was meant to prove that Milosevic was really a “dictator” like Ceaucescu. Being defeated in an election would have tended to prove the opposite.
In These New Times 