The government of Serbia, headed by Mirko Marjanovic, of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) of President Milosevic, has submitted to the Parliament of Serbia a restrictive draft bill on universities. The draft came as a surprise to the faculty and students of Serbian universities, neither of whom had been consulted by the drafters, whose names remain unknown. It is very likely that the draft will be adopted already on 26 May 1998 by the Parliament, which is dominated by SPS and its coalition partners the United Yugoslav Left (JUL) of Mirjana Markovic and the Serbian Radical Party of Vojislav Šešelj. Most democratic parties have boycotted the latest elections in Serbia.
The new bill, if adopted, will end all vestiges of the autonomy in Serbian universities. The rector of the university, the deans of faculties, and the collective governing and supervisory boards will be appointed by the government, without any guarantee of the representation of the faculty and students. The existing wider councils, already heavily influenced by government appointees (50%), will be abolished. The government appointed deans of faculties will have all the powers of directors of state enterprises: they will freely employ and dismiss university professors and other teaching staff. The faculty will have no say in their appointment, not even in the form of proposals. Appointments of full professors have to be approved by the minister of education.
Serbia established a fully fledged university in 1904. According the corresponding Bill of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Serbia, the University of Belgrade had full autonomy. The faculty elected the rector, the deans and professors. The minister of education was only notified of their choice.
The Bill on Universities of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was adopted under the authoritarian rule of king Alexander, in 1930. Nevertheless, the rector, the deans and the collective bodies were elected by the faculty, and teaching appointments were made by them. The minister of education had to approve them.
In communist Yugoslavia the influence of the ruling party was strong but informal. Various laws adopted in the period between 1945 and 1992 provided that the majority of members of the collective governing bodies be composed of the faculty, with a lesser number of government appointees and students. When the regime wanted to expel five dissident professors from the University of Belgrade it took them five years because of the opposition of their colleagues. Finally, they were excluded by a special bill of the Parliament.
In 1941, under Nazi occupation, the puppet government of Serbia promulgated a Decree which was more sensitive to the autonomy of the university than the new draft. The minister of education was the one who appointed the rector, the deans and the professors but he was bound by the proposals of the faculty, which he could either accept or reject.
The new draft is accompanied by aggressive propaganda of the media under government control. The government and its jurists, normally verbally “committed to the true Serbian traditions”, this time justify the restriction in the draft claiming that it “follows the models in France, Sweden and USA”. This is surprising for the otherwise xenophobic regime and its media. This is also not true.
The adoption of the draft bill will certainly result in the removal of the last vestiges of academic freedom in Serbia. It is indicative that this attack on the university comes at the same time as the violation of the Constitution of FR Yugoslavia through the appointment of the federal prime minister against the wish of the Parliament of Montenegro, the decision of the federal Ministry of Communications not to allow further operation of many independent radio and tv stations. The Kosovo crisis is meant to divert attention from these onslaughts on democracy and human rights.
Reacting to the protests of the citizens, faculty and students, the minister of education announced this morning that the government would withdraw some provisions concerning students, such as the amount of tuition, the number of examinations, the conditions under which they can pass from one academic year to another, etc. This is obviously meant to drive a wedge between students and their teachers and to breath life into the fictitious government sponsored student organisations which supposedly had claimed concessions for the students.
The Centre appeals to the world academic and human rights community to resist further deterioration of the internal situation in Serbia and Yugoslavia, which, if they stay undemocratic and authoritarian, will remain the epicentre of trouble and instability in the area.
