Playwright Ivan Lalic says that when he finally returns to writing after his stint with Serbia's anti-corruption council, he will have plenty of material for his next comedy.
But judging by his description of life as an anti-corruption campaigner, his next play won't be a rib-tickler, but more like a black satire in the tradition of Franz Kafka or George Orwell.
"Every day people send us information about corruption and we pass it on to the police and the prosecutors. But it all takes time and it can be quite Kafkaesque," he said, rolling his eyes.
Lalic is one of 10 members of the council which was established two months after reformist parties took control from former strongman Slobodan Milosevic, who was ousted in a popular uprising in October 2000.
Its task is massive -- to expose corruption not only within the Milosevic regime, when Serbia was regarded as the most corrupt state in Europe, but also under the current government.
Two council members have quit in protest at the post-Milosevic government's alleged unwillingness to cooperate with its own anti-corruption watchdog, and earlier this year the whole council threatened to resign.
Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic, stung by the resignation threat and under strong public pressure to act, invited the council for a quiet chat in which an unwritten "gentleman's agreement" was reached, according to Lalic.
"We now have some guidelines from the prime minister, who was very irritated by some of the media's interpretation of these issues," Lalic said.
"He said that he was available to talk to us any time we wanted, that he would do everything to help us. But these are nice words and we want to see action."
Council members, as well as independent watchdog groups such as Otpor (Resistance), complain that the government has been far too slow in introducing laws to fight corruption in Serbia.
They applaud new legislation on public procurements, but they say much more needs to be done in areas like political donations and conflicts of interest.
Hardly a day goes by without one minister or another being accused of corruption, but watchdog groups say little is done to follow up the allegations with proper judicial investigations.
The latest scandal erupted on Aug. 26 when former central bank governor Mladjan Dinkic, who recently became a leader of the G17 opposition party, accused Transport and Communications Minister Marija Raseta-Vukosavljevic of abetting the money laundering activities of organized crime bosses.
The minister, who also has been publicly accused of a conflict of interest over her connections to a shipping company, returned fire by saying Dinkic was "trying to protect himself" from allegations of wrongdoing in the central bank.
Very little of the mud thrown in the pages of the Serbian media ever sticks, although two officials recently lost their jobs after Dinkic exposed their alleged involvement in money laundering.
Lalic said that despite the lack of formal charges, the fact that corruption allegations were being given prominent places in daily newspapers was a step forward.
"All the polls show that this government is not popular and one of the main reasons is corruption, so we think the prime minister needs us a lot more than we need him," Lalic said, adding that public awareness was crucial.
"The people have to know that the government are their servants. But if you ask a Serb on the street they will all tell you that those in power are only there to serve themselves."
He said this attitude went back as far as the the postwar communist regime of Josip Broz Tito, and was only reinforced under Milosevic, when government forged close links to organized crime.
Srdjan Milivojevic, a director of Otpor, said crime and corruption had become the key battlefields for genuine reformers after the ouster of Milosevic.
"When the government changed after Oct. 5 [the date of the uprising which toppled Milosevic in 2000] it became clear that corruption was a chronic disease in the country," he said.
He said corruption flourished under the Milosevic regime partly because of growing poverty but also due to the constant atmosphere of crisis which "created a kind of greed for money."
"Another problem is that the government has changed but the style of government has not. They want to rule but not manage," Milivojevic said.
"A decade in opposition to Milosevic was a great financial strain on them so when they came to power they were eager to replenish their pockets."
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