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Vote Serbian
// Serbian Ultranationalists Amass Public Support before Elections
The parliamentary elections that will be held in Serbia on January 21 are already being described as historic. After all, the results of next Sunday's elections will decide whither Serbia: forward into Europe or back to the era of Slobodan Milosevic.
A Duet with Ceca
More than two months of pre-election campaigns concluded in Serbia yesterday, and the mood in the country was stormier than ever. And not surprisingly, since the stakes riding on the upcoming elections are extremely high.
The government that will be created after the elections will need to resolve at least two tough problems: first, it will need to conclude negotiations on the fate of Kosovo; and second, the new government must decide whether to turn accused war criminals over the International Tribunal in The Hague, especially General Ratko Mladic, who is believed to be hiding in Serbia.
"The upcoming elections will decide how Serbia will look over the next twenty years," Serbian President Boris Tadic said recently. More immediately, however, next Sunday's elections will set the character of the new Serbian government and determine whether the country will be able to cope with the tasks that have been set before it.
Twenty parties and political coalitions are taking part in the elections, but the contest is expected to boil down to a competition between a handful of the most important. According to the most recent public opinion poll, the likely winner, with 30%, of the vote is the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party headed by Vojislav Seselj, who is currently incarcerated in The Hague. Even from his prison cell, the leader of the radicals has managed to aid his party's campaign: his recent hunger strike turned out to be an excellent PR move. However, the ultranationalists have so far failed to solidify their position to the extent that they had hoped to do so.
Two to three percentage points behind the radicals is the Democratic Party of President Boris Tadic. The Democratic Party mounted a vigorous campaign under the slogan "Life Won't Wait!" and presented itself as the only political party capable of bringing Serbia quickly into the European fold. The strongest move thus far by the Democrats has been to offer Bozidar Delic as their candidate for prime minister. Mr. Delic was the finance minister in the government of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, who was assassinated in 2003, and his candidacy has been received by the country's disillusioned democrats as a signal that Mr. Tadic's party intends to pursue the course charted by the murdered prime minister.
The People's Coalition, headed by current Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, can realistically expect to garner 16-17% of the vote. During the coalition's pre-election campaign, Mr. Kostunica, a moderate nationalist, attempted to present himself as the "middle link" between the radicals and the democrats. The prime minister has also impressed the voters with his tenacious hold on Kosovo, as in the recently adopted Serbian constitution, which states flatly that "Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia." He has preferred to remain silent about the fact that the status of Kosovo may soon turn out to be entirely different. At a concert attended by thousands on January 13, which was the culminating event in the coalition's pre-election campaign, Mr. Kostunica sang a duet with the singer Ceca, the widow of Serbian paramilitary forces commander Arkan (incidentally, the political party founded by Arkan is part of the People's Coalition). That same day, President Tadic participated in a concert given by leading Serbian rock bands.
Another party that is expected to take a seat in the new parliament is the G17 party of Finance Minister Mladjan Dinkic, which is drawing closer to Mr. Kostunica's coalition. Meanwhile, the Socialists, Slobodan Milosevic's successors, will have to fight to secure the 5% of the vote needed to get into parliament.
No one doubts that parties that can be nominally described as part of a democratic bloc will receive a majority in the Serbian elections. The more complicated question is whether they will then be able to agree amongst themselves regarding the formation of a government. Both Mr. Kostunica's coalition and the Democratic Party aspire to the top spot in the new cabinet, and considering the serious differences between their positions, they will be hard-pressed to come to any agreement. As such, a fully-formed Serbian government may be a long time in coming, and the process may turn out to be no less full of intrigue than the elections themselves.
Cheap Raki
The international community has tried to encourage the leading players on the Serbian political scene to find some common language, to the extent that it has practically become an indirect participant in the upcoming elections. The international community has done everything in its power to ensure that the democrats, not the radicals, win in Serbia on Sunday.
First came weak pressure on Belgrade to hand over General Mladic. Though this demand has yet to be fulfilled, Serbia has not only escaped punishment but was even accepted into the "Partnership for Peace" program at the NATO summit in Riga last November.
In addition, the date by which the decision concerning the status of Kosovo was supposed to be announced has been put off. It was originally anticipated that the verdict of UN special representative Marti Ahtisaari would be delivered at the end of December. However, Mr. Ahtisaari is reportedly planning to recommend essentially full independence for Kosovo as a protectorate of the EU, something that could be seized upon by Serbian radicals to fuel nationalist hysteria and that would undoubtedly influence the elections. Thus it was decided that Mr. Ahtisaari should hold off on his announcement until a week after the Serbian elections, and the UN Security Council's decision regarding Kosovo's fate is now not expected until March or April.
Finally, over the last few months Serbia has been bombarded with visits from dozens of EU representatives expressing support for the parties of the democratic bloc and persuading Serbs to "vote with their intellects," i.e., for a European future. American assistant secretary of state for European affairs Daniel Fried has also attempted to convince the Serbian people to vote for the democrats by offering them an accessible example: "nationalism in the Balkans is like cheap raki: first it intoxicates you, then it blinds you, and finally it kills you."
In its own roundabout way, Moscow has also participated in the Serbian pre-election campaigns. Last week Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by telephone with Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, a conversation about which the Kremlin would say only that "[they discussed] pressing questions of Russian-Serbian relations" and that "the conversation took place on Serbian initiative." Mr. Kostunica's cabinet, however, made sure to get the full mileage out of the telephone call with Mr. Putin: almost half of the news programs on state television commented on the conversation.
From this commentary, the Serbs are expected to come to the conclusion that Russia supports Serbia in everything, particularly with regard to the Kosovo question, and that Russia is ready to go to any lengths for the sake of its Serbian brothers – even to the point of exercising its veto in the UN Security Council.
Moscow has not bothered to correct the Serbian government's propaganda. In unofficial conversations, Russian diplomats are saying that "we can hardly be more Serbian than the Serbs themselves." What that phrase means will undoubtedly become clear after the Serbian elections.
Gennady Sysoyev
All the Article in Russian as of Jan. 19, 2007
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