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11 Engendering Political Responsibility: Transitional Justice in Serbia Daša Duhaček* In the wake of the May 2008 elections in Serbia—one of many—it has to be acknowledged that after eight years of what one might have hoped would be a structural change, a turn to the undoubtedly democratic, pro-European policy, this political option has not in fact enjoyed the support of the majority of Serbian citizens. Without going into a detailed breakdown of political choices, what testifies to this assessment is the fact that the parliamentary elections in May 2008 offered the following outcomes: one, the creation of a government of the conservative ultra-right Serbian Radical Party, two, new elections and three, the desirable one—but, only in comparison to the first two—a government of democrats in an unholy alliance with the Socialist Party (of the late President Slobodan Milošević). Therefore—and nota bene: as a result of the elections—the option of a government formed by the Democratic Party, perhaps in a coalition with the Liberal Democratic Party, was not available.1 After the events in October 2000 and an all too brief period before the assassination of Zoran Đinđić in March 2003, during which there were signs that the transition to democracy had a beginning, there followed a period of continuity with the policies of Milošević and the ideology of Serbian nationalism. There is a grim warning that Hannah Arendt voiced on the concluding pages of The Origins of Totalitarianism “[T]otalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of strong temptations which will come up whenever it seems impossible to alleviate political social or economic misery in a manner worthy of man.”2 If the policy of the Serbian regime in the 90s, was rightly named (soft) * The research for this text was supported through Project no. 159011 entitled “Policies of Gender Equality in Serbia” by the Ministry of Sciences and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia. totalitarian and/or authoritarian, then the aftermath of overthrowing the Milošević regime could certainly provide an example of the “temptations of totalitarian solutions” and—after a brief intermezzo from October 2000 until March 2003—the continued survival of the totalitarian solutions themselves. The many analyses have mostly concluded with a consensus that Serbia has not yet dealt with its recent past.3 Articulating what is perhaps one of the key elements in understanding this state of affairs, Nenad Dimitrijević considers the (Serbian) case of a collective crime as opposed to the crime of the regime, the main difference being that the former is predicated on a certain consensus between the regime and its citizens, whereas in the latter case the regime cannot count on support of the citizens; and adds: “Nazi Germany and Serbia during the Milošević era could represent a good example.”4 Along similar lines James Gow and Milena Michalski claim: “The most significant … test of Serbia’s loss of morality concerned the legacy of war crimes. (…) This form of denial continued … More troubling was the degree to which there was still a tendency in a sizeable chunk of the population to reject any suggestion of culpability…”5 Eric Gordy, after thoroughly exploring all the aspects of how Serbia is dealing with its recent past reminds us that this matters precisely because “… a serious confrontation with the recent past is a necessary precondition for a relatively free move toward the future, …”6 To date, most of the decisions that are not only made by the governing structures but in effect supported by the citizens of Serbia stem from nurturing the nationalist myth, politics and policy. This text will, by unfolding its key concepts (i.e., engendering political responsibility and transitional justice, respectively), form a mosaic, which, when placed in the context of the public scene of Serbia today, can offer a possible account for the present state of affairs. It is especially important to reveal a connection between political responsibility and transitional justice since the state of affairs in Serbia is such that it requires establishing political responsibility in order for transitional justice to take place. At the outset I would like to recall and stress what is today the double meaning of engendering which has very much been in use in feminist theorizing and political practices: one, its mainstream usage— which we should not to lose sight of—meaning, to bring about and provoke; and two, to infuse with an...

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