POLITICS-YUGOSLAVIA: Elections Viewed as Biggest Test So Far for Milosevic

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Sep 21 2000 (IPS) - If the most recent opinion polls here are accurate Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic is on his way out of office.

Polls carried out in August and September show that Milosevic is trailing his opponent, opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica. Kostunica has the support of 32.5 percent of the voters as against Milosevic’s 26.6 percent, the latest poll, released mid-week by the reputable Strategic Marketing Agency, said.

Kostunica is leading the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), a coalition of 18 parties, into Sunday’s presidential elections.

But there are worrying signs that even if Kostunica lives up to the predictions, he may not be able to take power. Observers here say recent moves by Milosevic suggest that he will be extremely reluctant to relinquish his hold on the presidency.

“The regime’s campaign is shameless, accompanied by fantastic lies,” says Slobodan Vucetic, a former judge of the Supreme Court of Serbia. “The endlessly immoral fabrications have the aim of creating an alibi for electoral fraud and violence, as the regime is obviously not ready to give up power in a peaceful way.”

Milosevic has peppered his election speeches with references to “patriots” and “traitors”.

“The real enemy of our nation are the opposition parties,” he told supporters of his Socialist Party of Serbia at their closing rally in Belgrade on Wednesday. “They want to give this invincible nation (Serbs) to the colonising countries, NATO and the West. Being a colony would mean being under eternal sanctions. Those alleged political parties’ jobs are to spread lies, defeatism, provoking crime and terrorism,” he added.

Most chilling of all is a statement by Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, chief of staff of the Yugoslav Army (VJ). Pavkovic said on Sunday that “Sep. 24 (election day) is D-day for the army”. The military, he added, will prevent any attempt to “take power by force”.

Given the closeness between the government and the army, observers have interpreted Pavkovic’s words to mean no one but Milosevic will be allowed to grasp power.

There are also fears that there will be widespread fraud. Rumours circulating in Belgrade say that employees of state-owned firms like the postal and railway services have been given ballot papers with Milosevic’s name already encircled. They have been told to return to work on Monday with empty ballot papers to prove that they have done what was required of them.

To add to the uneasiness, more than a million ethnic Albanian voters from Kosovo remain on the voters’ list, although the province is UN- administered and no polling stations will be opened there. Ballot papers in Albanian have been printed and taken to the southern town of Prokuplje where part of the exiled Serb administration from Kosovo is based.

The government of Montenegro, the republic which, along with Serbia, forms the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, has called on its people to boycott the elections. It considers illegal constitutional changes favouring Milosevic and his regime in the forthcoming elections. The changes were pushed through the federal parliament in July, without consultations with Montenegro in violation of Yugoslavia’s constitution.

“These are going to be one of the most irregular elections here, as the regime is desperate to stay in power,” analyst Bratislav Grubacic told IPS. “But people are also desperately seeking change. No one knows what the morning after, on Sep. 25, will look like.”

It is this chance for change that has led DOS to contest the elections despite, what it says, are obvious signs that they will not be free and fair.

“We cannot wait any longer,” said Zoran Djindjic, one of the opposition leaders. “People demanded it of us. In the case of electoral fraud, we’ll know how to defend the victory of the opposition.”

Djindjic says 30,000 opposition supporters have been trained to help man polling stations as a way for DOS to exert some sort of control over the process.

It may be one of the few chances the opposition gets to control the polls. The state-controlled Central Electoral Commission has already denied a DOS demand for a special spray for voters to prevent multiple ballot casting.

And there will be no international or domestic observers monitoring the elections which will choose local government representatives, legislators and a new president.

Some 7.8 million people are on the voters list.

At his closing rally in Belgrade on Wednesday, Kostunica, a soft- spoken man, said this election had given Serbia a great opportunity to begin a different life. “This is a miserable state and a miserable life in it. I am just an ordinary man who wants an ordinary life, in a normal European state, like you. No more terrible excitements like in the past 10 years, no more poverty and isolation,” he told a cheering crowd, estimated at some 100,000.

Kostunica’s campaign is based on the necessity of re-establishing relations with the West and re-introducing Serbia into Europe. “That is our only chance for survival” he said over and over again in his speeches.

Yugoslavia’s once prosperous economy is in shambles because of a series of internal conflicts in the 1990s which saw the break-up of the country and two rounds of international sanctions. In addition, western nations bombed Serbia last year because the government’s attack on the province of Kosovo.

The West has already promised significant rehabilitation assistance if Yugoslavs oust Milosevic and Kostunica is betting that he is the man who will accomplish that feat. His campaign appears to have galvanised those opposed to the current government.

“A significant change in peoples’ minds has occurred in the past months,” Srecko Mihajlovic, a prominent psychology professor told IPS. “If there was a prevailing state of apathy before, Kostunica and the DOS programme have shook people and pointed at hope. It’s hope now that prevails among people, after so many years of despair.”