FRAME FOR THE PORTRAIT OF SERBIA IN 1994

The Socialists intend to form the Government on their own. There is no consensus on how to solve the crisis 1994.

The news that the President of Serbia, Slobodan Milossevicc would receive the leaders of political parties which have representatives in the Parliament of Serbia right after the elections was not true. When asked whether he had been invited to see President Milossevicc, Vuk Drasskovicc, the leader of the Serbian Renewal Movemenent (SPO), said that he was not interested in any signs of the intentions of the President of the Republic "coming through the President of the Executive Board of one of the parties". He alluded to Zoran Djindjicc, who is suspected by his opposition colleagues of having made a secret agreement with President Milossevicc. After the elections which brought 29 deputies to the Democratic Party, Djindjicc lobbied the opposition parties on a compromise, but there are no signs that any of the opposition parties will respond. All speculations that the Democratic Party would form a direct coallition with the Socialists were rejected by Djindjicc on several occasions, but he also continued supporting the idea of an interparty compromise and some type of a government of national salvation. In the meanwhile, old tensions in the Democratic party are intensified again, after the news that before the elections, Djindjic had talked with Milossevicc, without informing other memebrs of his party about it. The conflict will most probably culminate in a direct conflict between the President of this party, Dragoljub Miccunovicc, and the President of the Executive Board, Zoran Djindjicc. It is not totally inconceivable either that this party might split again. Some of the diplomats in Belgrade assess that such a split in this party could provide Milossevicc with the deputies he lacks in order to have the majority in the Parliament.

MINORITY GOVERNMENT

The Socialists who allege that they have won "the greatest election victory ever accomplished within a proportinal election system in the past twenty years", are for the time being irritably rejecting all proposals for the division of power. On Sunday, December 26, in a Radio Jagodina broadcast, young Goran Perchevicc stated that the Socialists expect to form the Government on their own, since the elections have shown that their rating had improved among the voters. Ivica Dachicc, the spokesman of this party, announced in Pirot that the government would be formed "according to the constitutional procedure" and "in due time", which means that he, too, promised that the new Government would be formed by the Socialists, who, as customary, "invite other parties to "nominate candidates" for the Socialists' Government. It seems, nevertheless, that the ruling party is trying to buy time, waiting perhaps, for a peace agreement on Bosnia to be signed and for international circumstances to be changed.

In some polling sites in the district of Prishtina, the elections were annulled for the second time, and will be held fo the third time on Jaunary 5. A minority government of the Socialists would have the support of almost a million of voters less than at the time when the Socialists had Ssesselj for an ally. Almost 5,300,000 of the registered voters would be against such a government, and among them is the distinctly nationally oriented Albanian voting population and a large number of those who abstauned in other parts of Serbia. The number of abstentions is big and reaches 38 per cent, and it is by a whole quarter larger than last year.

TACTICAL SHIFT

Vladimir Goati from the Institute of Social Sciences, says that after the latest elections, the political portrait of Serbia is better balanced than it used to be in the last few years, because a smaller number of voters joined the national extremists. A part of the votes returned from the Radicals to the Socialists, but at least 200,000 of them went elsewhere, probably among those who abstained.

During September and October, the Socialists set antichauvinist propaganda in motion, as part of their struggle with Ssesselj's Radicals. Although their representatives, like for example Ivica Dachicc, claim the opposite, the attempt of the Socialists to break Ssesselj down was a completely failure. The Serbian Radical Party resisted acute pressure and won 593,000 votes (as opposed to 1,060,000 votes at the previous elections). Vojislav Kosstunica who quite obviously exploited national issues in his campaign, linking himself to Karadzzicc, was not successful. The attempt to introduce the Party of Serbian Unity with Arkan as the "instant Ssesselj" was a fiasco, although it was indeed useful for the Socialists that Arkan snatched away about 40,000 votes from the ultranationalist Ssesselj.

In May, research-workers of the Institute of Social Sciences in public opinion polls noticed an unrecorded intensity and spread of xenophobia in Serbia. They have not yet completed the analysis of the empirical material collected in a more recent investigation, so they still do not wish to draw a conclusion that xenophobia is not as intense as it used to be, say in May last year. The election results lead to the assumption that this hatred-producing machine is somewhat slowing down, but we are still far from being able to speak of an atmospehere tolerant enough for a normal political life. The shifting of voters is more likely to be a tactical shift, than a reflection of a serious change in the political relief map of Serbia and of an actual decline of the extremist nationalists. At the peak of the campaign, the Socialists ceased attacking Ssesselj, launched their own national election slogan "For Serbia!" and focused almost all their strength against the democratic centre. After the elections, as part of the effort to prevent their opponents to form the government, the Socialists ironically speak of a reconciliation between the "two best men", Vuk Drasskovicc and Vojislav Ssesselj, trying to create an image of the democratic opposition as chauvinistic, which had certain echoes in foreign media. At the same time, the regime is reproaching Ssesselj that he might find himslef sitting in the same government as Vesna Pessicc, the President of the Citizens'League, the party which joined the Depos and which was satanized and accused until recently by the Socialists and the Radicals, for being "anational".

DIVISION OF THE ELECTORATE

After the latest elections, a minority government which might be formed by the Socialists will be contested by a number of ideologically and politically heterogeneous parties, which will speak in the Parliament in the name of about 2,000,000, mostly young voters. Huge political gaps lie between them. On one side is the so-called "3D's" opposition (the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party of Serbia, and the Democratic Movement of Serbia - DEPOS, which marks significant differences within it, between the Citizens' League and national intellectuals, for instance). On the other side are the parties of national minorities, like the Democratic Community of Hungarians from Vojvodina or the coallition of two Albanian parties. And on yet another side, is the Serbian Radical, Ssesselj, who immediately declared that he would not cooperate with the Hungarians and thus shattered all hope that the opposition could form the Government. All the opposition parties, although of various colours and profiles, have something they agree about: they all consider the authorities to be incompetent, corrupt and linked to the Mob. The situation is, therefore, essentially different from that in 1990 when the SPS could count on the support of 2,320,000 voters, or during the past mandate when the regime was defended by a million of Serbian Radicals in the front-line against the Democratic centre. President Milossevicc invested his populistic authority, the suprapatriotic propaganda "For Serbia!" was renewed, yet it was all insufficient to ensure full domination in the Parlismanet for the Socialists. Had the elections been the vote of confidence to President Milossevicc, he would not have remained in power, because the party he fought for won the votes of less than a quarter (23%) of the electorate. Milan Bozzicc, a new deputy of the DEPOS, and a dissident of the abstaining Serbian Liberal Party, thinks that a part of the new voters of the Democratic Party should be added to this number. Even if this calculus were taken into account, and if Arkan's votes were added to Millossevicc's, as well as the votes of the other SPS's favourite - the associated Leftists, and even if the votes dispersed among small "instant" parties produced by the Socialist Party itself, according to many observations, the President of Serbia could not have collected the total of thirty per cent of the registered voters. His only advantage lies in the dispersion of his opponents and the anaemia of the public overcome by the crisis. It is not quite clear whether this anaemic passivity will continue. In the past two years the democratic opposition was able to demand the vote of confidence of the government claiming the support of the order of a million and a half voters, and now this number is better concentrated (Democratic party - 496,000; DEPOs - 720,000; Kosstunica - 200,000), with a possible support of about half a million Radicals and a possibility that at least a part of the dissatisfied abstained voters might become active. At least half of this number was ready in the past three years for various extra-parliamentary forms of pressure at the time when there were none in Yugoslavia. Parliamentary parties are not announcing any of them at the moment, but it should not be a complete surprise should they occur.

Despite the misery their policy caused, the Socialists gathered about 1,568,000 votes, three per cent more than last year. This paradox held water only three days after the elections. In the week which followed the elections, the general strike of the railway broke out blocking Serbia for two days, although the Railway, as a public enterprise controlled by Milomir Minicc, Milossevicc's deputy in the Socialist party. The authorities, it seems, easily appeased this strike, but this does not mean that a chain of trade-union protest will not be started. On New Year's eve in Serbia everything seemed to have come to a halt: there was no power supply (because of a strike of Kolubara miners), there was no money in the banks, railway traffic was at a standstill, city transportation in two-mliion Belgrade was almost at a halt.

ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

At the Institute of Economic Sciences in Belgrade, a few possible scenarios for 1994 were elaborated from a macroeconomical viewpoint. Tomislav Popovicc, the Director of the Institute, in an article published in Kragujevac newspaper "Svetlost", assumes, inter alia, that the course of events could lead towards a general civil turmoil, interethnic conflicts accompanied by sabotage, armed skirmishes, falling to pieces and impotence of state institutions. According to one of the possible variants, establishment of a military-police administration is also possible, but masked into the attire of national interest, or introduction of an "enlightened" military administrattion. The Human Rights Chamber of the Centre for Anti-War Actions, with the signature of a prominent lawyer, Vladan Vasilijevicc, Ph.D., protested because of a recent statement made by the Chief of the General Staff of the Army of Yugoslavia, Momchilo Perissicc, in which he said that democracy is still in its infancy, that the opposition might abuse this fact and that it was the task of the Army to protect internal stability. In response to the demand that Perissicc should be dismissed because of making such a statement, the regime probably will not budge. Through its senior officers, the Army made it obvious that it supported the ruling party during the election campaign, especially when it reached its peak in December, just like it had done on previous occasions. The worst possible variant, according to the economists, will occur if by the end of the first quarter of 1994 peace agreement on B&H is not signed, if international isolation continues, if the winter will be severe, if the hyperinflationary falling to pieces of the market goes on, as well as the general drop of production, standard of living and the degree of health protection, if extremist radical political trends become active again, and if the constitutional system becomes paralyzed. In all these cases, the market will be suspended and the principles of antieconomy will be introduced. Further decline of production is anticipated, as well as of employment and income; occasional interruption of the operation of major technological systems; paralysis or interruption of functioning of the vital services such as health care, transportation or heating. The economy is transferred to the black market, the dinar loses all market functions of money. According to one possibility, in such circumstances, dissolution continues by the force of inertia, as well as uncontrolled issue of money, enormous and increasing deficit of public funds, consumption of the very substance of the econoimy, criminal privatization and complete disapperance of the minimum of market operation of large systems such as power production, oil industries, railway). The very institutional foundations of the economy are self-destroyed on the basis of a political decision to buy social peace for a few months. A system of subsistence supply of the population without any limitations is introduced. The present crisis is achieving an endemic nature, and the economy is approaching a state which will hardly be repairable.

No matter what government will be formed it must reach a general consensus about the necessity to emerge from this situation. If the results of the elections so far spoke of a silent consensus on "war communism", a consensus about finding the way out of the crisis, which would have to mean reduction of military and social expenditures, for the time being is nowhere in sight. The Federal Government is at the moment trying to transfer the social expenditures from the enterprises which are paying their workers on "forced vacations" to state social funds, but they, too are hopelessly empty. This is what the frame for a portrait of Serbia in is like.

Milan Milossevicc