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  Bill Clinton statue is already a relic | Slavenka Drakulic |
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The former US president should have been too embarrassed to attend a ceremony in Kosovo with unpleasant historical echoesThe world still remembers how, with tumbling of communism, statues of Lenin, Hoxha and Ceausescu, plus countless Soviet soldiers and heroes tumbled as well 20 years ago.
Indeed, falling statues of hated leaders became one of the powerful symbols of the age.But what should we make out of people cheering a newly erected 11ft high 2,000lb statue of another "beloved leader" now? No, not in North Korea, China or Cuba - but in a newly independent democratic Kosovo.
Last Sunday thousands of ethnic Albanians gathered in the capital Pristina on a boulevard that bears the name of the former American president Bill Clinton, in order to take part in a ceremony of unveiling of his statue.
As the red cover was removed, Clinton could see his younger self sprayed with gold, with a left hand raised, a typical gesture of a leader greeting the masses.
In his right hand he is holding documents engraved with the date when Nato started the bombardment of Serbia, 24 March 1999.Clinton was obviously moved by this expression of gratitude.
"I never expected that anywhere, someone would make such a big statue of me," he said to thousands of cheering and applauding Kosovar Albanians, holding American and Kosovo flags in the small square..It is true that Clinton deserves gratitude.
Without US involvement in ending the war in Bosnia in 1995 (while EU states stood by and watched the carnage) - the end would have been more uncertain.Then, after the Albanian exodus in 1999, the Nato's bombing campaign followed, stopping the persecution of ethnic Albanians in Serbia.
There are still some thousand US soldiers stationed in Kosovo, as a part of Nato's peacekeeping force.But one wonders if there was not another, perhaps more appropriate way of expressing gratitude? Wouldn't the name of the main boulevard in Pristina be enough? Kosovars are not the only one involved in this odd practice: several years ago Croats erected a statue to Hans-Dietrich Genscher, then the foreign minister of Germany, which recognised Croatian independence first.There is something pathetic in building such monuments to living people today.
It smacks of a long tradition of the personality cult during communism - a sad and (one would have hoped) outdated practice.
In Clinton's case, the statue is even gilded, as an angel in a church or Enver Hoxha, who also had a gilded statue in Tirana, a long time ago.Aside from aesthetic and historical considerations, was the erection of the Clinton statue really a politically smart gesture now, when Serbia and Kosovo need to find a way of living together in a peaceful and civilised way? Albanians must be aware that, by engraving the date of the bombardment of Serbia, they could antagonise their neighbouring country - as well as their own Serbian minority.
Paradoxically, it was Clinton himself who urged Kosovars to build a multiethnic country.There is another nagging question: why does Clinton feel the need for this kind of worshipping? By accepting such a gesture, he only proved that his ego is at least the size of his statue.
The former American president should have known better.
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