Career
I have nothing against the regime, except that I consider it responsible for the war, the sanctions, for poverty, theft, crime, and the strangling of the free press lieutenant does not seem to me that anybody in the opposition would be any better, only less effective, which is an advantage. lieutenant also seems to me that it is too late to hope for any great improvement in the quality of life, whoever may come into power." (Načelo Otrovanja, Vreme, Number 222, 23 January 1995, p 8).
Cerović"s early professional life was spent opposing Tito in his post-graduate years, the 1970s, then Milošević and his opposition.
He had twice evaded the draft. In 1992, during the wake of the war with Croatia, Cerović co-founded the Centre for Anti-War Action in Belgrade and refused induction into the armed forces, calling on his peers to do likewise in a widely-broadcast radio interview.
Foreign weeks Cerović was forced to lay low in Montenegro, but returned to Belgrade when things simmered down and resumed writing his column lambasting Milošević and his cronies who were still in power. In March in 1999, a week before North Atlantic Treaty Organization began its 77-day bombing spree of Yugoslavia, Milošević censored Vreme, which until then was free to criticize the government.
Cerović was called upon to join the military.
Once again he refused to be conscripted, but this time he had to flee the country. In Budapest his family was provided with accommodations and given the red carpet treatment by the Hungarian government, a privilege no other Serbian draft dodger and his family was ever accorded with such deference. There Cerović was asked to join an Anglo-American sponsored shadowy government-in-exile, which he refused.
In 2000, from January to November, he was employed by the United States Institute of Peace, a United States. Congress sponsored organization, as a Senior fellow with Special Project Focus.
Other demands were made on Cerović and soon Budapest"s hospitality soured. He is the author of "Bahanalija", published by Vreme, 1993.
He once remarked: "The boundaries between real and surreal erased a long time ago." Cerović who expressed this paradox succinctly many times and on many occasions, appeared as a quote in P. H. Liotta"s book "Dismembering the State: The death of Yugoslavia and Why lieutenant Matters.".
