ABSOLUTE OR RELATIVE LEAD OF SOCIALISTS?

AIM, Beograd, 20.12

Unofficial election results in Serbia

In the absence of official results, the day after the election day in Serbia, it is only known that SPS got more votes than any other single party, that extreme nationalist parties recorded greatest loses and moderate Democratic party the greatest gain of ballots in comparison to previous election results.

Prognosis of complete results, coming from various parties, differ to the extent that SPS claims this election as its complete victory - it is in the lead in all 9 election districts, and it got about 30 % more votes than in the previous election, while 4 major opposition parties consider themselves a common winner and discuss the possibility of a post-election coalition that will form a government.

According to the SPS portparoll Ivica Dacic, among 80 % counted votes

SPS got 37,2 % votes, DEPOS - 16,1 DS - 11,3 SRS - 13,1 DSS - 4 %. The ruling party leads in Belgrade as well, even in two of 4 municipalities where DEPOS had a majority.

On the grounds of available results SPS procalimed itself as absolute election winner, expecting 123-129 from 250 parliamentary seats. The other party sources predict that SPS will get less than 120 seats (115 - SRS, 117 -DEPOS, 111 - DS). The uncertainty is due to the lack of complete results from the election district Pristina, where the socialists traditionaly got the largest support.

The leader of the main opposition coalition DEPOS admitted that his expectations of election results were different, but anyway he claimed that it was the opposition that won the election: two thirds of voters "said No" to SPS and its bearer of the election list president Milosevic. The election thus could be seen as a no-confidence vote to Milosevic and his policy, said Draskovic, accentuating this as "the main and irrefutable fact" of this election.

The "war over results" is just another sign of "the balance of weaknes" between the ruling party and opposition parties that characterized Serbian political scene in last two years. The post-election day, however, brought about a new tone in opposition leaders speeches. The men who until yesterday used to quarrel bitterly among each other, not sparing the other party from the severest accusations - and who failed to unite for the election - suddenly omitted hostile words on each others accounts: all of them expressed the hope to form a coalition government. The Democratic Party leader Zoran Djindjic was the only one to give more details on a perspective unity: the coalition government could rest only on a new, common and non-ideological "crisis program" and consist of experts.

The final unofficial results that will show whether SPS got a relative or absolute majority will be known on December 21.

Jovanka Matic