POLITICS: Serbs Told To Keep Voting Until They Finally Get It Right

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric-Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Dec 4 1997 (IPS) - Like truculent schoolchildren forced to repeat a lesson until they get it right, Serbia is going to the polls again on Sunday, Dec. 7, in a third attempt to elect a new president, a process that many suspect will go to a fourth ballot.

Sunday’s polls are a re-run of an October vote that failed to give a candidate an overall majority and the November run-off, which then failed to draw the 50 percent and more turnout that the constitution requires to make the vote valid.

In that vote the highest scorer was the ultra-nationalist Vojislav Seselj, leader of Serbian Radical Party (SRS), who took 49.18 percent of the votes cast. He is expected to put up a strong fight against the chosen candidate of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic’s ruling Socialist party, Milan Milutinovic, foreign minister of federal Yugoslavia.

The election of a president will unblock the current jam in the republic’s institutions and allow the formation of a new Serbian government. Serbia’s parliament was elected on Sep. 21 but only held its inaugural session on Wednesday. A president is needed to appoint a new prime minister.

Also Milosevic’s Socialists no longer hold an overall majority in the parliament, holding 110 of its 250 seats, followed by Seselj’s SRS who have 82, and the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) with 45 seats. Milosevic stepped up to become president of the lingering Yugoslav federation (linking Serbia and tiny Montenegro) in July when denied another term as Serb leader by the constitution.

Seselj has forged an early lead, with Milutinovic in close pursuit and trailed by SPO leader Vuk Draskovic, the charismatic former leader of the now collapsed Zajedno opposition coalition. Polls this week gave Seselj 25.1 percent support, well ahead of Milutinovic (13.8 percent) and Draskovic (12.5 percent).

Seselj, 43, a man apparently unconcerned by the fact that he is openly described as a racist fascist by foreign officials, studied law at Sarajevo University and wrote his doctoral thesis on ‘the political substance of militarism and fascism’.

He has deployed a populist rhetoric that has played heavily on the economic ills endured by Serbia under the Socialists, but maintains that he would still like to “redraw” Serbia’s borders with neighbouring Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia.

The other four candidates on Sunday, Dragoljub Micunovic of Democratic Centre, Vuk Obradovic of the Social Democratic Party, independent Miodrag Vidojkovic and Predrag Vuletic of the Social Liberals are expected to be quickly weeded out.

The constitution requires a minimum turnout of 50 percent of voters plus one for the polls to be ruled valid, and for the winner to take more than 50 percent of votes cast. If Sunday fails to deliver a result, as on the last two occasions, a re-run will be held in two weeks’ time between the two who do best on Sunday.

Most observers expect a re-run as the majority of voters are already bored with voting, disinterested in the lukewarm promises of candidates and fed up with the economic situation in the country.

The new face in the race belongs to Milutinovic, protege and favourite of Milosevic, called in to take over from the previous Socialist candidate, Zoran Lilic, who came second to Seselj in the last failed round despite the all-out support of state controlled TV.

Milutinovic, 54, is a lawyer by education and Yugoslav foreign minister since August 1995 and is regarded as a confident associate of Milosevic and his powerful wife Mira Markovic.

But his years as a career diplomat and Yugoslav ambassador to Greece may not endear him to Serbian voters, many of whom associate government posts abroad with the freedom to smuggle profitable luxury goods in and Yugoslav foreign currency reserves out.

Some observers attribute Serbia’s peaceful relationship with Greece — in marked difference to the rest of Europe — to Milutinovic and his contacts, but diplomats say he an “obstinate negotiator,” lacking in diplomatic tact.

In November 1996, with Serbia rocked by massive pro-democracy street protests, he met with European Parliament deputies who described his comments as “scandalous, shocking and destructive”.

More recently he raised tensions over the Serbian province of Kosovo, overwhelmingly populated by ethnic Albanians but strictly ruled by Serbs, who regard it as the Serbian people’s most historically revered spot.

“Kosovo is the ‘Jerusalem’ of all Serbs, who will never be a minority in their own country,” he said, while campaigning in the province a few days ago. “The (Albanian) separatists must know this”. “We will never allow anybody to interfere in the Kosovo issue or in our internal affairs.”

Kosovo, with its 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority, was stripped of its Tito-era regional political autonomy by Milosevic in 1989. It has been heavily policed ever since and reports of human rights abuses are common. Tension has mounted there in the past week after clashes between armed Albanians and police left four dead.

He has also undermined cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia’s prosecutions of Balkan war criminals. “We cannot extradite our citizens to The Hague because that is against our constitution,” he told Belgrade TV. “We did not agree in the Dayton agreement about that.”

Milutinovic, took part in the negotiations in Dayton, Ohio, two years ago that brought a tenuous end to the war in Bosnia- Hercegovina, and which specifically requires the signatories to cooperate with the Hague-based court.

Yet Milutinovic stresses that he is “personally against Yugoslavia’s isolation, because we can’t live without the world” adding: “The world needs us and we need the world, to learn from its mistakes and experience.”