POLITICS-YUGOSLAVIA: Milosevic’s Party Fights for Survival

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Jul 26 2001 (IPS) - Only a modest celebration marked the date the League of Communists of Serbia (SKS) changed its name into Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS).

The Communists ruled Yugoslavia from 1945 until October last year, when Slobodan Milosevic was defeated in presidential elections.

Unlike the previous events, the Jul 18 celebration — marking the change of the party’s name 11 years ago — was not held in luxurious Sava centre as before. Milosevic, too, was absent.

Milosevic remains in the custody of the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, after being extradited to the Dutch capital on Jun 28. He is indicted for war crimes against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999. Officially, he remains the head of the party.

“SPS is living through its worst days in history and it is hardly likely it will survive the heavy blows that practically removed it from the political scene”, political analyst Vladimir Goati told IPS.

Referring to Milosevic, he said: “It’s not possible to run SPS from The Hague”.

As the former federation fell apart in bloody wars of 1990s, the modern Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), comprising Serbia and Montenegro, was run by the new party. In Serbia it’s SPS, and in Montenegro it’s the Democratic Party of Socialists.

“It is not the rising anti-communism that ruined SPS”, says Dijana Vukomanovic, a researcher at Belgrade Institute for Political Studies. “It was the complete destruction of society in the 1990s that opened peoples’ eyes. On one hand, people had to fight for survival everyday … on the other hand, they saw SPS elite getting unscrupulously richer every day.”

According to Vukomanovic, the conflicts in the federation, coupled with the U.N. economic sanctions and the air raids by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in 1999 destroyed the reputation of SPS. Those events led to the unprecedented impoverishment and isolation of the country, described by Milosevic as “the international conspiracy against Serbs”.

Hundreds of Milosevic’s aides have been arrested since last October for alleged financial embezzlement.

A Serbian court recently ruled that SPS should return to its rightful owners the buildings the party obtained through “illegal” transactions. The bank account of what used to be the strongest party in Yugoslavia for decades has been empty for months as no income is trickling in through the previously well developed patterns.

Investigations also show that no SPS office ever paid a phone bill since 1990. Funds of SPS-run companies, worth dozens of millions of dollars, were re-directed for the needs of SPS officials and into the SPS electoral campaign last year. Customs income was re-routed to cover SPS congress in February 2000, together with all the expenses for more than 1,000 guests from “friendly” countries.

Calls by the SPS to protest the extradition of Milosevic showed where the real popularity of the party stands. Several rallies failed to gather more than 15,000 people.

Analysts say there is a chance for SPS to regain public trust, but only after radical changes. For the time being, two wings of the party are fighting for control of the SPS.

One is led by Milosevic’s loyalists who want to clear the name of the former leader. “We have brilliant plans for the future”, says Zivorad Igic, a top SPS official. “All our activities will be dedicated to the political and legal rehabilitation of Slobodan Milosevic”.

The other wing, led by younger and more pragmatic SPS officials, has other plans. “We (SPS) are learning to be the opposition,” SPS Belgrade official, Ivica Dacic, says. “We want a modern SPS, the true party of the left”.

According to the analysts, the only chance for SPS to recover and become the party of the left lies in its break with Milosevic. “SPS is burdened with the past in which Milosevic had played the key role. The sooner the SPS distances itself from that past, the better chances it stands to win public support”, says Milan Nikolic, head of the Belgrade-based Centre for Alternative Studies.

“The best tactics for the party will be to publicly and resolutely get rid of the burden of the past”, he says. “Without such a radical move, the SPS, even in the case of temporary growth of its popularity, is doomed to melt till its ultimate disappearance”.