HOW YUGOSLAVIA VOTES
Topalovich, Zivko
HOW YUGOSLAVIA VOTES Tito's Advance 'Planning' Includes Results of Election By ZVIKO TOPALOVICH MANY YUGOSLAVS who were formerly prohibited from voting will have an opportunity to cast ballots...
...But they delude themselves...
...Tito has cleaned all oppositionists out of his executive departments, his state administrations, and his army...
...Under such conditions, who will dare put up candidates in opposition to those of the Government...
...The campaigning period, he indicated, is being made the occasion for eliminating from parliament all who are suspected of sympathy with the Cominform or the West...
...Topalovich elucidates—stops there...
...the electoral drive against the remnants of parliamentary opposition will complete Tito's purge...
...Nevertheless, if they are sufficient - ly organised, they may create difficulties for the builders of socialism...
...For in the "people's democracies" everything is planned—well in advance--even elections and the "democratic" will of the "people " THIS IS AN ELECTION YEAR in a number of important countries...
...What others...
...Stalinold follow travelers, agrarian reformers, and new-approach liberals digest that one...
...The British tod off la February with a spectacularly close ballet battle...
...THE MACHINERY Tito has set up to obtain complete "unanimity" is perfect...
...In Yugoslavia the method of voting resembles that of ancient Greece...
...ANNOUNCING that the task of the hour is to explain to the Yugoslav people the basic motives behind the attacks of the USSR and the Russian Bolshevik party against Tito, Djilas Continued: "It would be a mistake to think that this struggle against the Russians Is aot connected with the battle against the) exploiting class which hf>s been carried on here at home, or with that waged against foreign capital and bourgeois reactionaries in general...
...munist cells...
...He is head of the exiled Yugoslav Socialist party, and has written authoritatively for us before on the affairs of his country...
...In our country there cannot be two programs, one for socialism and one against it...
...Tito has thus made the issue plain...
...They never play tricks with concessions...
...At a recent closing session of the Central Committee of the Popular Front, Minister of Propaganda MUovan Djilas warned Cominiorm and other adversaries of Tito that they will derive no pleasure from the outcome of the March 26 elections...
...The printing presses and the paper supply will continue to remain a state monopoly...
...In short, concludes Djilas, the Tito regime cannot tolerate the organization of those forces which demand the restoration of "liberty...
...What la more remarkable, no one In Russia or Yugoslavia will be able to display anything like the disagreements permitted oven in what has been called "monarchofasclst" Greece...
...Just the other day...
...No group in Stalin's Russia or Tito's Yugoslavia can hope to come within seven votes of the government party, as the Conservatives did In Attlee's Britain...
...The authorities will continue to exercise the arbitrary right to deprive a citizen of his food card or expel him from his home...
...To outsiders it may appear so...
...We must recognize that the reactionaries hope, by creating confusion, to achieve the sort of 'liberty' which they have in mind...
...Among those now permitted to vote for candidates to Yugoslavia's two houses of parliament are 7,000 political prisoners just amnestied, which brings up to 25,000 the total released from prisons and concentration camps since this "people's democracy" was established...
...We shall not permit the presentation of any such program...
...Zlvko Topalovich, as readers of The New Leader are aware...
...Tha votes will be counted by commissions appointed by the Communists...
...Let the Titotots...
...Two week* ago Greece was put to a rlflM electoral toot...
...But only two need concern us here...
...No outsider will be permitted to check their arithmetic...
...Is no stranger to Yugoslav politics...
...Like many others, they are on the way out...
...Before the count is ended the chairman of the commission will have in his pocket both the totals and the speech he will deliver to announce them...
...Everything, naturally, is done in fuU view of the election officials...
...A special commission headed by Moshe Pijade, 'spiritual" leader of the Yugoslav Communists, chooses from among these candidates several for each district...
...In this Front we have assembled all citizens who desire to realize a people's program, who have in mind the building of socialism...
...Is closely tied in with our effort to build socialism...
...So whenever you hear the Moscow, Sofia or Belgrade radio announce that ninety-five per cent of the voters "enthusiastically cast their ballots for the official list," do not doubt the veracity of thes^ reports...
...Wo would bo wrong if we overlooked the throat from either side or if we failed to recognize the connection between them...
...If you do not agree that socialism ought to be built as Tito wants it to be, then you are out of luck: You can take no part in this election...
...And In the Fall, of course, our own Congressional elections will occur...
...One to tempted to draw all sorts of fascinating conclusions from these elections in different parts of the world...
...Next week it will bo the turn of the Yugoslavs to veto...
...Is it true that the Tito dictatorship is growing democratic...
...Tito has, it must be admitted, introduced one interesting innovation into the Yugoslav electoral system...
...The governments concerned have in their hands incontrovertible proof of their correctness...
...Instead of using a printed ballot or a voting machine, the voter drops a little rubber ball into one of a number of urns before which are placed the names of the candidates...
...But the new type rubber bail falls with a loud ping-g-g!—¦ and anyone who fails to vote right is sure to be a marked man...
...This is why we must oppose and destroy these related dangers, foreign capitalism and Russian Bolshevism...
...The establishment of free opposition parties must therefore be prevented.' The Government's tribunals will continue to pronounce judgments in conformity with the interests of the "socialist revolution...
...The police will continue to round up all "enemies of the people...
...as on former occasions, certain voices out-of the past are asking whether other candidates can bo presented in this election...
...Can there be a party beside the Popular Front...
...We shall march to the polls in a united front of the people of Yugoslavia...
...Many others will echo that cry...
...It Is abundantly clear that respect at least for the forms of democracy, la so widespread that oven dictators like Stalin and Tito must adhere to them...
...cry Tito supporters the world over, producing these facts...
...But to the Yugoslav people the Titoists speak a different language...
...So if anyone wishes to present another program it must be a program opposed to socialism...
...First...
...In reality, the struggle against both our enemies, the Comlnformlsls and the Western capitalists...
...TITO HIMSELF, in his first campaign speech, at Uzice on February 19, frankly declared: "Now...
...Now Tito has added to this system the novel idea of manufacturing the voting pellets out of hard rubber...
...The final returns from this election will be known in'advance...
...Soviet Russia went to the polls...
...polls, and attempt to deceive Western public opinion into thinking that he is moving toward "true democracy...
...In this way Tito will permit the people to express their "will" at the...
...Second, any resemblance hetwoen elections in a people's democracy"and In one like ours—as Dr...
...Formerly, the rubber used was so soft that voters could slip them into any urn without attracting attention...
...HOW YUGOSLAVIA VOTES Tito's Advance 'Planning' Includes Results of Election By ZVIKO TOPALOVICH MANY YUGOSLAVS who were formerly prohibited from voting will have an opportunity to cast ballots in the general elections which will take place in Yugoslavia on March 28...
...One urn is reserved for "blind" voters that is, those who do not prefer any candidate...
...We are in midrevolution...
...The voters will thereafter choose, from Pijade's select list, those whom they prefer as "builders of socialism...
...And revolutions do not fool around...
...A list of Popular Front candidates is selected at public meetings, where no one dares criticize the proposals of the Com...
...Behold the introduction of real democracy...
Vol. 33 • March 1950 • No. 11
