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Mikulic's stature hit a new low last summer when an investigation uncovered Yugoslavia's biggest financial scandal since World War II. Led in part by the country's newly aggressive press, the probe found that Agrokomerc, a giant food-processing firm based in the republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, had issued up to $500 million in worthless IOUs to 63 Yugoslav banks and other enterprises. The revelations forced the country's Vice President, Hamdija Pozderac, to resign after the Belgrade newspaper Borba and other publications linked him to the scandal. Agrokomerc Chief Executive Fikret Abdic is in jail awaiting trial. At least six top Communist officials in Bosnia-Herzegovina resigned from their posts or were expelled from the party as a result of the scandal, along with dozens of lower-ranking figures. The ousters represented one of the few instances in which the press and public opinion have altered the power structure of a Communist East European regime.
Still reeling from the Agrokomerc affair, Mikulic lurched into his latest crisis last week after pushing painful economic reforms through parliament. A reworked version of a 120-point plan that leaders of the republics flatly rejected last month, the measures froze prices of some food staples but increased others by up to 70%. The goal: to bring prices into line with costs of production. Whatever the economic merit of the moves, they provoked a fire storm of protest and criticism.
Meanwhile, authorities have had to cope with Yugoslavia's long-simmering ethnic tensions. The worst problem is the impoverished southern province of Kosovo, where once dominant Serbs are now outnumbered almost 9 to 1 by ethnic Albanians, many of whom seek independence from Belgrade. Animosity has run high since Yugoslav troops crushed ethnic Albanian riots in 1981. The Serbs complain of rising Albanian persecution in the form of rapes, murders and cattle blindings. Hostility mounted last month when Serbian newspapers quoted former Yugoslav Vice President Fadilj Hodza, a top-ranking ethnic Albanian Communist, as sardonically telling army-reserve officers that Serbian women should move to Kosovo to serve as prostitutes. After a wave of protests by outraged Serbs, Belgrade stripped Hodza of his party membership and embarked on a new federal aid program for Kosovo.
As Mikulic struggles with such problems, a growing number of Yugoslavs believe he will be forced out by next May, when the Prime Minister must seek parliamentary approval to serve another two years. Reports circulating in Belgrade say Mikulic is seeking a successor to enable him to step down. Many citizens openly yearn for a leader with the vision to revamp the sclerotic Communist hierarchy and loosen controls over politics and the economy. That would follow the astonishing growth of press freedom and other rights that have blossomed since Tito's death. But no leader short of a new Tito may be able to advance bold new reforms or successfully end Yugoslavia's crisis.