Politika
- Government Crisis?
- The Opposition on the Rumored Versions
- Mr. Uzunović on the Cabinet Session.
Politika's front page of 12 October 1926 followed a crisis in Nikola Uzunović's cabinet over Stjepan Radić, the Croatian Peasant Party leader whose party then sat in the government. The paper reported that Belgrade politicians were waiting for a Council of Ministers decision that would settle the fate of the Radical–Radić coalition, and that most expected the cabinet once again to accept Radić's explanations, which the paper called clumsy and contrived. A second report quoted Uzunović refusing, before the talks ended, to confirm even the point put to him and described talk from government circles of widening the coalition to the Democrats and clericals, an idea parliamentary circles thought hard to realize. A third noted that even the usually forthcoming prime minister said almost nothing after the cabinet session.
This reading covers three medium-confidence excerpts transcribed from the page images. Each begins mid-sentence where the text was clipped, and the second and third stop just before the statements they introduce. Small-type paragraphs in two cells and one whole cell were too faint to transcribe. The legible text does not name the specific incident for which the cabinet sought Radić's explanation, and the background pages consulted do not describe it either.
Translation
Government Crisis?
…noon. While awaiting the government's decision, which was to be decisive for the further fate of the Radical–Radić coalition, all political circles, the Radical ones included, held to a stance of waiting. Although in political circles yesterday before noon it was not known what the Council of Ministers would decide regarding Mr. St. Radić, the great majority of politicians were nevertheless convinced that the government itself would find a way to help Mr. Radić extricate himself from this predicament. The prevailing belief was that for the time being everything would once again stay as it was, and that Mr. Uzunović's government, determined to defend its positions at any cost, would this time too be forced to accept Mr. Radić's explanations, however clumsy and contrived they might be.
The Opposition on the Rumored Versions
“We cannot state even that before the talks are concluded!” Mr. Uzunović said in reply to that remark.
THE OPPOSITION ON THE RUMORED VERSIONS
From circles close to the government it could be heard several times in recent days that the only way out of the present difficult political situation is considered to be the formation of a coalition that would include, besides the Radicals and the Radić followers, the Democrats and the clericals as well. These wishes were discussed yesterday in parliamentary circles too, and the general conviction was that this wish cannot easily be realized. One of the prominent members of the opposition set out his opinion on this question to us yesterday as follows:
Mr. Uzunović on the Cabinet Session.
…to the Court Marshal's Office.
MR. UZUNOVIĆ ON THE CABINET SESSION.
Not even the Prime Minister, who is otherwise always exceptionally accommodating toward journalists, would be any more expansive yesterday at noon than the other members of the government. Mr. Uzunović said only:
Context
How the Radicals and Radić came to govern together
The coalition whose fate Politika was awaiting rested on a deal struck in 1925. On 27 March 1925 Radić's Croatian Peasant Party recognized the central government, the rule of the monarch and the Vidovdan constitution before the full parliament. It then entered government with Nikola Pašić's People's Radical Party: Radić himself became Minister of Education, and party members Pavle Radić, Nikola Nikić, Benjamin Šuperina and Ivan Krajač also received ministerial posts. When corruption scandals forced Pašić to resign in April 1926, Nikola Uzunović became prime minister on 8 April 1926 and inherited the partnership. The article's “Radical–Radić coalition” refers to this arrangement between the main Serbian and the main Croatian party, and the paper treated a dispute over a single politician as a question of whether the whole cabinet would survive.
Why observers expected the cabinet to give way again
According to the article, most politicians expected Uzunović's cabinet, determined to hold its position at any cost, to accept Radić's explanations “this time too”. Uzunović's footing was weak: he faced internal conflict within his own party, and a succession of short-lived governments came and went under him. Radić, for his part, used his place in the cabinet to campaign. Historian Latinka Perović writes that as minister he turned to the struggle against corruption centred on the Court, declaring that people in the King's circle belonged behind bars rather than at Court. The words “this time too” show that the paper saw the cabinet as having accepted earlier explanations from Radić, and it presented the prime minister as ready to keep conceding in order to preserve the coalition.
The precedent for a coalition with Democrats and clericals
Politika reported that circles close to the government saw a coalition adding the Democrats and the clericals to the Radicals and Radić's party as the only way out of the crisis, while parliamentary opinion judged it hard to achieve. Such partners were familiar to Radić. In July 1924 the Democrat Ljubomir Davidović briefly headed a cabinet formed by a coalition of Democrats, Slovene Clericals and Bosnian Muslims, with support from the Croatian Peasant Party. The 1926 proposal reported here would have brought parties that had cooperated with Radić two years earlier into the same government as the Radicals, his current partner. The paper presented the idea as a wish of the government side and turned to a prominent opposition figure for his view of it.
How the Radical–Radić partnership ended
The coalition outlasted this October crisis by only a few months. Nikola Pašić, president of the Radical Party, died on 10 December 1926, and the power-sharing arrangement with Radić's party was cut short after his death. Radić gave up his ministerial post, returned to the opposition and in 1927 entered into a coalition with Svetozar Pribićević. Uzunović's own premiership ended on 17 April 1927. The waiting described on this front page therefore belongs to the last phase of the only period in which Radić's party governed in Belgrade alongside the Radicals.
Politika's standpoint toward Radić
Calling Radić's explanations “clumsy and contrived” was Politika's own judgment, and the paper's wider stance matters for reading it. Historian Latinka Perović, tracing the climate that led to the 1928 shooting of Radić and other Croatian Peasant deputies in parliament, names the editor-in-chief of Politika among those who were brewing bad blood between Serbs and Croats in those years. Hers is a later historian's interpretation rather than a contemporary finding, but it helps explain the tone of this front page, which portrays Radić's conduct as an embarrassment the cabinet would have to cover for.
Original
Криза владе?
подне. У очекивању одлуке владине, која је имала да буде пресудна за даљу суд бину коалиције радикално радићевске, сви политички кругови, па и радикални, нису излазили из става ишчекивања. Иако се у политичким круговима ју че пре подне није знало каква ће бити одлука министарског савета у погледу г. Ст. Радића, ипак је највећи број политичара био уверен да ће баш сама влада наћи начина да помогне г. Радићу да се извуче из ове незгоде. Владало је уверење да ће за сада оста ти опет све по старом и да ће влада г. Узуновића, одлучна да своје позиције брани по сваку цену, и овога пута бити приморана да прими објашњења г. Радића па ма како она неспретна и намештена била.
ОПОЗИЦИЈА О ВЕРЗИЈАМА
- Ми не можемо пре закључења разговора ни то да констатујемо! - рекао је г. Узуновић на ту примедбу. ОПОЗИЦИЈА О ВЕРЗИЈАМА Из кругова блиских влади могло се последњих дана чути више пута да се сматра да би једини излаз из садашње тешке политичке ситуације било стварање једне коалиције у којој би поред радикала и радићеваца били још и демократи и клерикалци. О тим жељама говорено је и јуче у парламен тарним круговима и опште је уверење било да се та жеља не може лако остварити. Један од истакнутих чланова опозиције овако нам је јуче изнео сво је мишљење по овом питању:
Г. УЗУНОВИЋ О СЕДНИЦИ ВЛАДЕ.
у маршалат Двора. Г. УЗУНОВИЋ О СЕДНИЦИ ВЛАДЕ. Ни председник владе, који је иначе увек изванредно предусретљив према новинарима, није хтео јуче у подне да буде опширнији од осталих чланова владе. Г. Узуновић је само рекао: