From: abrodnik@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca
Subject: Re: Bosnian Future: My View
Organization: University of Waterloo
Distribution: soc
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1992 14:51:17 GMT

In article <Sep.24.02.31.36.1992.24543@andromeda.rutgers.edu> pshane@andromeda.rutgers.edu (Ana M. Shane) writes:
>	                      ...                     How come
>	(no flames, just sadness) that everyone forgets now that
>	original conflicts and battles in Yugoslavia started between
>	the ones who wanted to preserve her unity and the ones
>	who wanted (and succeeded unfortunately) to hack her into
>	national states.!!

I would like to point out here that separation is and can not be a
goal of any reasonable man (neither in ex-YU nor in other countries
with similar tendencies). Why reasonable? Because it's easy
(relatively) to accomplish and the to-be country which lives for
separation is short lived without future. what I want to say is that
to have prosperous country you have to have (first of all) vision what
to do in future and hence not only up to separation.

To conclude, the separation can not be a goal, but at most a mean to
achieve a goal and in this light it might be useful to ask what were
goals of ex-YU republics that led them to "separation" (separation
here intentionally in quotes)? What if old federation could not
satisfy these goal?

In the same letter Ana also says:

>	There were many Slovenians against separation (but afraid to
>	say so), many Croats against it (needles to say they couldn't
>	express themselves freely either), and all over Yugoslavia,
>	many of those who are NOT members or supporters of the
>	"warring factions".

I think that there is a _big_ difference between "warring" and
warring. Namely the first ones are just trying to accomplish the afore
mentioned goals per se. and the later are trying to accomplish their
goals by armed confrontation.

Furthermore, a world is a constant confrotation of goals and
intentions. Human society has to cope with this and for this purpose
it developed better or worse methods. Nowadays one of the best methods
is direct public expressing -- a referendum. Obviously the referendum
can be also misused in at least two general ways: the first one is
"pre fact" and the other "after fact". The second one is, for example,
cheating on results, cheating on process of submitting voices etc. The
"pre fact" one is for example a single sided campaign etc. Both these
problems are possibly to be removable up to certain degree. The second
one even completely by some kind of independed control, and, most
important, it is objectively measurable. Such a control was certainly
present on referendums in Slovenia and Croatia.

The "pre fact" stuff is much more problematic. First of all it is
completely objectively non-measurable and hence anybody can _always_
claim that it is non-fair.

In all together results are always questionable, but when we are
talking about 80 to 90% of all electorate body deciding for certain
option, even statistics can't really overturn the results. Therefore I
completely disagree with Ana's implication that people in Slovenia
were "afraid" to vote against the sovereignity (this was the question
on a ballot and not separation). The term "afraid" means here that
they were afraid that somebody might come to them and say they will
lose job or even life because of very vote. But I agree that they were
afraid about their future and how to make a prosperous one under the
relations that were and especially as they were developping in ex-YU.
But this concludes the story and brings forward again the problem
mentioned at the beginning -- the difference between goal and mean.

Best regards,

Andrej

Xref: sparky soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna:209 soc.culture.yugoslavia:8965