Elections or choice

By: Saša Janković

Dear Ilir,

You had (yet another) election.

I want to ask you about the outcome – did people really made a choice – elected something new, or they merely participated in elections, and everything continues as before (a deputy/councilor more or less, here or there)?

In search of an answer to another unknown, I recently asked an AI (artificial intelligence) to offer her authentic, super-smart solution to our greatest challenge: the famous “Kosovo question.”

And that clever, new, unlike-any-of-us virtual friend of mine produced a plan, first in broad strokes and then in detail:

• “Belgrade cannot formally recognize independence, but it should not obstruct the factual…”

• “Pristina should enable a community of Serbian municipalities with real autonomy, respect and ensure the exercise of Serbs’ human and minority rights…”

• “The international community should guarantee security, and a clear, tangible EU perspective…”

• “No big leaps, inch by inch, technically…”, and so on.

I began writing about my surprise that she was so bluntly cheating and plagiarizing – after all, this is the strategy that has been known and, supposedly, implemented for years… but then I thought that maybe the AI isn’t plagiarizing at all; perhaps others before me simply asked her the same question, and then they plagiarized her… My God, I almost ruined my relationship with the (soon to be) most powerful mind in the world by accusing it of plagiarism.

Fortunately, I asked instead whether that plan of hers is implementable with Vučić and Kurti in power (or with people of a similar type).

She answered by listing how each of them could score political points and profit from implementing it.

“You didn’t understand me,” I wrote. I’m not asking whether and how their governments might benefit, but whether any kind of solution is possible with them in power?

“You didn’t understand me,” I am sure the AI thought (or calculated) now, but – more tactful than I am – she didn’t say that; instead, she quietly brushed aside my arrogance and repeated the answer, only in other words.

I only understood a little later.

Usually, when I’m talking with people who know less about a subject than I do, and answering questions from those who are slower to grasp things, I respond in the same way she responded to me now. Not only did she reply in a diplomatic manner, appropriate to the topic and to our still superficial “acquaintance,” but in fact she answered very clearly – and put my arrogance to shame at the same time.

So now, under the impression left by Madam Artificial, I ask you, whom I trust, in carefully chosen words: were these merely yet another elections, or did a real CHOICE happen – one that indicates the possibility that, in the near future, from your side of the (administrative) border, the current course of our reality might change?

Sincerely,

Saša

Kosovo heading into a new cycle of change