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Saturday, July 1, 2000 Dusan Gluvakov, Banat Forum Secretary General Wheat Crop Has Yielded Well Only on Radio Television Serbia Programs
Dusan Gluvakov, nicknamed Tubacin, was born in 1950 in Crepaja, a place in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina. He was one of the founding members of the Social Democrat League of Vojvodina, but soon after Gluvakov distanced himself from the League's party leader Nenad Canak. Advocating that Banat, the eastern part of Vojvodina, was more clearly defined as an entity than Vojvodina itself in economic, geographic and historical terms, he turned to his ancestral roots. Together with his neighbours Gluvakov 'welcomed' Radoman Bozovic, a high ranking official of the Socialist Party of Serbia, with eggs thrown at the delegation of the ruling party officials. Two years later he was one the founding members of the Banat Forum, a nongovernmental organisation evolving from various peace initiatives and focused on preserving local identity as well as defending the interests of Banat's farmers. Gluvakov drinks bourbon, scotch, Banat's bourbon and homemade brandy. He has been playing a guitar since he was twelve. Gluvakov is also the frontman of the "Pub Blues Band". FS: For years Vojvodina's farmers have borne on their back the burden of social peace in the country. Will the peasantry be capable next year of providing daily bread for cities and towns? Our analyses indicate that famine is knocking on the doors of more than seventy per cent of the entire population of Serbia. Recent floods, underground waters and reckless use of fertilizers will reduce our wheat crop to such a degree that it would not last until the next harvest. Wheat on some thirty per cent of the cultivated land has been destroyed, however, it has yielded well only on Radio Television Serbia programs. Yet, at issue here is not only wheat. Eight years ago corn was attacked by rootworm. The authorities did not reveal this information for another three years. This dangerous plant disease has reached by now Subotica, the northernmost city of Vojvodina, as it has been spreading about a hundred kilometres to the north each year. Moreover, soybeans, sunflower and sugar beet crops will surely not yield well either. FS: Given this year's natural disasters, farmers are being forced to put up with imbalanced price parities, low purchase prices of their products and monopolists on the market. To what an extent is the state actually obstructing agricultural production? Instead of a long-term project aimed at revitalising our agriculture, announced by Federal Minister for Agriculture Nedeljko Sipovac during the last year's protests of farmers and members of the Banat Forum, we are witnessing to ongoing ruthless exploitation of villages and farmers' households. If the wheat purchase price were lower than 3,300 deutschemarks per wagon, than no laws and no threats with confiscation of farmers' land could force the farmers to work just to incur losses in the end. The games with confiscation and returning the land to rightful owners can instil no fear into Banat's farmers anymore. Against an illegitimate state we are fighting with all legal and civil means at our disposal. This year, on Christmas Eve, we chased out of our village 'financial inspectors' who came to seize our basic means of production allegedly for tax evasion. We are warning all those people who have made such absurd laws, those who are implementing such ridiculous regulations and all those trespassing on the farmers' land that it is just plain robbery and that thieves will sooner or later wind up in prisons and their families will be ashamed of them for generations. The Law on Cultivated Land is just one more proof that Serbia is far removed from the rule of law. The farmers are second-class citizens in this country because they are not even allowed to manage their own private property which has been in their possession for centuries. Naturally, Banat Forum advocates liberal capitalism, i.e., it represents the farmers who are actually landowners. They were landowners while the Communists were in power, and now they have been impoverished and robbed of everything that they cannot even cultivate their fields properly. Moreover, they are being threatened that their land will be deprived of their own land. FS: Banat Forum has representatives in the municipal assemblies of Kikinda, Kovacica, Secanj and Opovo. Does your organisation intend to grow into a political party? We also have a representative in the province's parliament. We've been denied for a long time the right to organise ourselves as a political organisation. Now, when it is quite obvious that the opposition political parties are tottering, they are exerting pressure on us to go into politics. We are dealing with anything of interest to Banat, ranging from history, culture and ethnology to politics. That is why you can take me at my word that no one will ever anymore force Banat's farmers into kolkhozes, not even Soviet Serbia. Edvard Jukic
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