POLITICS-SERBIA: The Right Advances, but Still no Government

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Dec 29 2003 (IPS) - Right-wing parties led the way in Serbian parliamentary elections Sunday, but it is unlikely they could form a government.

The Sunday parliamentary elections in Serbia produced no single winner. Three years after they voted out former president Slobodan Milosevic, Serbs seem uncertain what they want for the future.

The ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) led with 27 percent of the vote, giving it 81 seats in the 250-member parliament, according to figures released by the State Electoral Commission (RIK) early Monday morning. The party had 23 seats in the last parliament. Some 60 percent of the 7.5 million electorate cast their vote.

Pro-reform parties, once united in the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) that toppled Milosevic three years ago obtained 42.1 percent of the vote, giving them 124 seats in the 250-member parliament.

They would need to come together and seek the support of another party to form a government. But insurmountable differences that led to the collapse of the coalition mean they are far from coming together again.

They would in any case get no support from the Serbian Renewal Movement, a conservative and nationalist party that won 23 seats, and Milosevic’s Socialist Party, which won the 22 remaining seats, down from 37 in the last parliament.

Milosevic could theoretically become an MP. – Technically speaking Milosevic can be a deputy, but our party is yet to decide who is going to take up the seats,” said Socialist Party official Ivica Dacic.

No party is ready to enter into a coalition with the SRS that used to share power with Milosevic’s Socialists in the 1990s.

Minority parties representing ethnic Hungarians, Croats and Bosniaks failed to win any seat.

“The results came as no surprise,” political analyst Vladimir Goati told IPS. “But, as there are no possibilities for the democratic bloc to cooperate again, Serbia will soon see another round of the parliamentary elections. This means that we are entering a period of instability which will further stall badly needed reforms.”

The substantial vote for the right could be a pointer to the future. “With such developments, one can only say that due to the undelivered promises of all those who took over after Milosevic, Serbia will turn further to the right,” said Goati, voicing the opinion of many analysts.

The three parties in the so-called “democratic bloc” differ over the pace of reforms and cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) based at The Hague. The largest among the three, the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS which won 18 percent of the vote with 53 seats) considers quick reforms too painful for ordinary people.

Serbia was in economic ruin after the fall of Milosevic. Reforms introduced after he fell led only to surging unemployment.

Corruption and a lack of the rule of law have emerged as major problems, besides the economy that has hardly started to recuperate after some major state-owned companies were hastily privatised.

Former Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic had introduced a quick pace of reforms and extradited Milosevic to the ICTY in June 2001. Djindjic was killed in March in a conspiracy led by Milosevic loyalists.

“Despite some changes in the past three years (since Milosevic fell from power), Serbia did not see the necessary changes in the field of corruption and synchronisation of its laws with Europe,” analyst Dusan Janjic says. “This country needs a new way of thinking.”

The Serbian public also remains deeply divided over the role of Milosevic in the wars of the 1990s that tore the former Yugoslavia apart and took the lives of 200,000 people, most of them non-Serbs. Many see cooperation with the ICTY where Milosevic is being tried for war crimes as unpatriotic.

“It’s an unclear message and we’re in a stalemate” analyst Slobodan Stojiljkovic told IPS. “The European Union (EU) was to start the assessment for Serbia’s membership in March. The impossibility to have a stable government certainly will not help. If any government is formed, it will be the result of a feeble compromise, unable to efficiently solve any problems.”