Serbia After Elections

SPO and the Radicals: Combinations of the Two Best Men

AIM Podgorica, October 1, 2000

(From AIM correspondent from Belgrade)

In a release written with much less enthusiasm then ever before (and much shorter than usual), late this week leadership of the Serbian Renewal Movement congratulated the presidential candidate Dr Vojislav Kostunica for winning the elections and at the same time invited its membership and followers to join the peaceful defence of the citizens' electoral will. And even before this invitation was officially sent, individual SPO officials somewhat shyly joined the DOS leaders behind the stage erected at the Republic Square in the centre of Belgrade in their call for a general strike in defence of the citizens' electoral will.

Once, at the time when their questioned and marginalised leader Vuk Draskovic enjoyed the reputation of an undisputed champion of street rallies, the majority of now shy SPO leaders stood on the stage, and not behind it. This time, with their presence they symbolically testify of a new position of the until-recently strongest opposition party which, with its "yes-no" policy, pushed itself to the very margins of the Serbian politics. This was best seen in Belgrade, where SPO was in power until recently and is now left without a single mandate in the City Assembly, which is a kind of punishment for a deplorable way in which it ran the city in the previous period.

The Radicals, i.e. their leader Dr Vojislav Seselj also congratulated Vojislav Kostunica on his victory with one sentence which summarises his rather gloomy post-electoral mood. "I did all that I could to prevent your elections for FRY President, but since I failed in that I wish you much luck and success in your new position". During his appearance on TV Palma, Seselj rather convincingly explained the position of his party after the elections which have reduced the Radicals to only 10 percent of the electorate's support (instead of the expected 20) and deprived them of local power in Zemun which they were particularly proud of. He said: "We are wounded, but have not succumbed".

The first SPO and SRS analysis of the past elections have shown that this time a large number of their one-time voters have quite certainly voted for the DOS list and Vojislav Kostunica. Anyway, this was rather obvious already some twenty days before the elections when the majority of public opinion surveys (quite reliable too, as it turned out later) pointed that the presidential candidates of SPO and SRS, Vojislav Mihailovic i.e. Tomislav Nikolic, enjoy far lower support than that their parties once had.

Some ten days before the elections it became clear that both sides were gradually giving up their presidential candidates and entering the last lap with very little enthusiasm. Under their breath, most of SPO officials claimed that their boss in Budva had totally lost every sense of reality, while those less critical of Vuk Draskovic spread the story that the next elections would be the end of opposition, that neither DOS nor Kostunica would do anything, that "Sloba has once again fooled them all" and that the only important thing for the SPO top leadership was to preserve the party infrastructure for the next republican elections which, according to them, were most important. The Radicals appeared somewhat more confident on the eve of the elections - they gave up on Nikolic in advance, but believed that their sudden distancing from the left coalition and the Government of the national unity, could have as a result if not in the preservation of one-time positions, then a negligible fall of the rating their party.

Finally, both parties ended up on the list of the greatest losers at the past elections together with the Socialists. In contrast to the Socialists and their chief, Draskovic and Seselj admitted that openly and offered their resignations. Probably under the great pressure of his wife and JUL, Milosevic was planning to use these elections for settling the accounts with the greater part of the opposition (already at his party's Congress this February he claimed that the opposition was non-existent) and, at the same time, bring Seselj down to earth. Seselj entered these elections with an ambition to start a war with the united opposition and raise his own stakes for possible new bargaining with the Left. DOS fought the Left and the Radicals together. At the same time, the majority of opposition leaders wished to get rid of Draskovic at these elections once and for all. As for Draskovic, he mostly fought with himself. The epilogue showed that the Left was actually weaker and more disjointed than ever, Seselj was slowly sliding downwards, Draskovic disappeared from both the federal and local level, while DOS probably surprised itself with its success with its plans.

SPO's and SRS's failure at the elections led many analysts to come to a conclusion that the Serbian political scene has finally achieved the long desired reduction of the number of major parties and that there are now only two actors in this story - the Left and the United Democratic Opposition (DOS). Aware of that danger, both Vuk's men and the Radicals announced their offensive in an attempt to get out of this tight spot in the only place where they still represent a political factor of a kind - the Serbian Parliament. Simple calculation shows that two best men, Draskovic and Seselj, who have quarrelled long ago, might join their mandates in the Serbian Assembly (SRS-83 and SPO-45) this time and call for a vote of no confidence in Mirko Marjanovic's Cabinet and thus force the regime to call early parliamentary elections. The idea on joining the mandates of these two parties was first mentioned just after the autumn elections in 1997.

At that time, with a skilful manoeuvre, Milosevic held Draskovic for whole six months at power's door negotiating with him the alleged division of authority in Serbia. At the last moment, practically at the Assembly session at which the new Government was proclaimed, Seselj jumped in and stayed until this very day. After three full years, the best men remembered their friendship and expressed readiness to negotiate the toppling of the Government and ways for ending the regime which has been running Serbia for over one decade with disastrous consequences. At first sight it seemed that that would not be a hard thing to do, especially now when Milosevic has lost much of his former power - primarily the possibility to incite opposition parties to quarrel or alternatively admit Vuk and Seselj at power's door.

However, it seems that the toppling of the Government and early elections for the Serbian Parliament will not happen so soon as it might have seemed on the night when first electoral results were announced. In an attempt to launch some kind of political initiative and even symbolically save the party after the devastating defeat, the SPO leadership immediately expressed its readiness to start the process for bringing down the Government.

Seselj who is in that Government, but is also its frequent critic, decided to first mend things after the defeat and then, probably in spring, to speed up the fall of Marjanovic's Cabinet and demand the calling of elections. Highly pragmatic Radical leader is convinced that the holding of elections at this moment would mean another victory for DOS and therefore, claims that it would be better to wait for the opposition leaders to start quarrelling and making mistakes, and for the inflated euphoria created by their landslide victory at these elections, to blow itself out. At the same time, Seselj announced that in the coming weeks he would drive the Left up the wall inch by inch - he would demand the dismissal of the incompetent Minister of the Interior, Vlajko Stojiljkovic, revoking of the Law on Information because its penal provisions obviously do not apply to the state media, then the privatisation of the news and publishing house "Politika" whose Director, according to him, should be in prison, as well as some changes in the judiciary and electoral commission whose members, according to the Radical leader, include many criminal.

If Seselj succeeds in these actions he might manage to get back on his feet again and leave the impression that the Radicals are still in opposition, and not only Milosevic's service. At the same time, he would thus weaken some of the regime's levers and avoid joining DOS in this major enterprise of helping topple the Government. This calculation also includes the conviction of the Radicals that it is, perhaps, better at this moment to join forces with SPO and give this party a chance to even symbolically return to the scene from which it was pushed by the will of its voters.

However, this calculation might not be so long-lived. Seselj, who is currently making biggest calculations and contemplating his next move, because in contrast to Draskovic he can lose a lot, must consider the same things as his left wing coalition partners. They thought to have found a formula how to destroy the whole opposition, to make a short work of presidential elections, to reduce Radicals and to rule from here to eternity. In the end, it turned out that they did not know their basic mathematics which is why they counted each vote given to their presidential candidate as two, in an attempt to postpone their own end and keep the power for a bit longer.

Nenad Lj.Stefanovic

(AIM)