A Coup for Every Occasion

Just when we thought the era of coups was over and they were no longer in fashion even in Latin America, in the last fifteen days or so we have witnessed, they say, as many as two attempted coups. One was in Gabon, somewhere across half of Africa, attempted by some charlatans in military uniforms. For a full fifteen minutes they held a microphone at some local radio station under their control, from which they announced they were taking over the country, and then a police patrol, reinforced by an incomplete civil protection unit and a local postman, handcuffed them and sent them to prison. The second coup, if we are to believe the interpretations of the regime in the Republika Srpska, was also unsuccessfully attempted by conspirators gathered in the organization "Justice for David", behind which, they say, stand evil foreign factors who want to destabilize the Republika Srpska and who, according to reliable intelligence data, are led by English intelligence circles!!!

If we were so bold and impudent as not to take Dodik and his associates at their word that this was a classic coup attempt, we would surely reach for some lexicon or encyclopedia, and there we would read how a coup, by definition, represents an unconstitutional and illegal replacement of the holders of power in a state using military force and usually with the political support of foreign factors. It is typically carried out by high-ranking political officials and anti-regime officers, and for its success it is necessary to achieve full control over the army, police, and media.

And then we would understand nothing!!!

If we blindly follow the definition, we will initially ask ourselves how a coup can be carried out in a political entity that is not a state at all, practically in a piece of a state. If we believe the regime's claims that the conspiratorial organization "Justice for David" attempted a coup, we will have to deeply ponder what military force that group, led by Davor Dragičević, who, as the general public could see, doesn't even have a nail clipper in his pocket, let alone any weapons, counted on in its destructive intention. If we also take seriously that inevitable detail from the definition that for a successful coup it is necessary to take control of the army and police, we would have to laugh out loud watching the stiff members of the support unit, who would not exchange the comfort of life in uniform for any ideals, let alone support some adventurous group that is constantly complaining against the authorities, so every night, instead of going to a tavern, they have to go on a gloomy and boring duty at the "Banja Luka Tiananmen Square". There is no revolutionary in world history who could convince them to renounce the regime and join a rebellion!

As for foreign support, we media workers, from the vague and indefinite statement of Milorad Dodik, who from the position of Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina continues to rule the Republika Srpska like a patriarch, did not quite manage to understand whether this coup attempt is a continuous action of those 40 English intelligence officers, highly specialized members of the British military-intelligence services, who came back then, before the October elections, to destabilize the Republika Srpska and its regime and enable the Alliance for Victory to win the elections, so that this entity would be definitively deconstructed and dismantled.

If we were so frivolous as to seriously accept the claims of the regime in the Republika Srpska about what a coup actually is, we would conclude that the last coup in modern Europe was carried out by - Milorad Dodik. You will remember (and some will not, because many in this country have no memory beyond the current national leader) it was in the first months of 1998 when Biljana Plavšić, then President of the Republika Srpska, appointed him Prime Minister. Since he did not have his own army and loyal officers to round off the "military component" of the coup, the international community "rented" him its forces, so on their tanks, as befits a true people's champion, with the full benevolence of the then High Representative Carlos Westendorp, he marched into legend - he became Prime Minister at a time when his party had a stable majority of two deputies in the entity's parliament. It was a textbook example of a flawlessly executed legal coup with all the necessary elements, all by the book. International forces first arrested and dispossessed a bunch of SDS officials, then collected deputies in the entity's parliament and flew them by helicopter to the assembly hall, finally installing the man they considered a "cooperative" leader who looks to the future. Full legitimacy to this coup was given a few months later by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's visit to Banja Luka - we still have before our eyes the image of the touching, heart-wrenching welcome of the enthusiastic Prime Minister and the military and state honors prepared for the high-ranking American official.

The story of coups and the manipulation of that term holds a special place in Balkan history. Prince Pavle Karađorđević, in October 1934, on the night when his close relative, King Alexander, was killed in Marseille, understood what broad horizons open up for a capable and skillful man, someone who knows how to deftly manipulate the term "coup" or "state coup". As the first regent, meaning the successor to the throne until the coming of age of Alexander's son Peter II, he forbade the news of the Yugoslav monarch's death to be announced to the people that same night, under the pretext that the communists might stage a revolt against him, meaning - a coup. That dramatic night in the palace, General Petar Živković, Prime Minister Nikola Uzunović, and Minister of the Interior Božidar Maksimović, with whom the prince consulted on what to do, must have marveled to themselves how, with which army and with whose support, the communists could stage a revolt when 95 percent of the communist leadership was already in prison at that time, and the remaining five percent, terrified of possible arrest, dared not even stick their noses out of their conspiratorial hideouts. What Prince Pavle had in mind became clear only when it was too late - when they learned that on the same evening, from the famous Belgrade lawyer Todorović, King Alexander's personal legal representative, he had stolen Alexander's gold in the middle of the night and transferred it to his own safe. It was indeed the most imaginative and brilliant example of manipulation of a possible coup in all of Serbian history, because by morning, after the successful night operation, he was no longer interested in how and when the media would announce the news of King Alexander's death and what would happen afterward.

The regime in the Republika Srpska, of course, is not and never will be even up to the knees of Prince Pavle in imagination and skill, so this current manipulation of the coup is far more primitive, with incomparably more mundane goals. It has been reduced to mere scaring of the people, and especially the already confused academic and intellectual circles, so that they do not by any chance get the idea to support the street protests in Banja Luka. Dodik's model of rule "Republika Srpska - that is me" has once again shown all the determination to nip in the bud anything that would even smell of rebellion against the regime.