SOCIALISTS GOING ON

Elections in FRY

AIM Belgrade, 5 November, 1996

According to ballots counted so far, the Socialists along with the Yugoslav Left and the New Democracy have already won 33 seats in the federal parliament. Unofficial data indicate that with its success in the local elections, the opposition could broach the ruling regime in the provinces of Serbia. The greatest surprise in the elections is success of of Vojislav Seselj's Radicals

Sunday elections in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia have ended in line with the slogan of the ruling party of Serbia: we shall go on! On Tuesday afternoon, the Federal Electoral Committee stated that, according to the ballots counted until that moment, coalition of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), the Yugoslav Left (JUL) and the New Democracy (ND), won 33 mandates in the Chamber of Citizens of the Federal Assembly, the coalition "Together" won 17 mandates, the Serb Radical Party 11, Alliance of Voivodina Hungarians three and coalition "Voivodina" two seats.

Projection of the final election results, carried by independent daily Nasa Borba "according to unofficial, but very reliable data", is even more crushing for the opposition, because it shows that the alliance SPS-JUL-ND would win 58 seats. Montenegrin Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) won 21 seats in the Chamber of Citizens, which means that the coalition of ruling parties of Serbia and Montenegro will have a large majority in ther Federal Assembly. It is true that the SPS and the DPS will not have a two-thirds majority in this chamber, which will not allow them to vote (on their own) in favour of possible amendments of the federal Constitution, which have been subject of political rumours for a long time.

This is, nevertheless, cold comfort for the opposition in Serbia, which has made a great effort to win the voters over for changes, despite the total blockade in media. Coalition "Together", according to the so far available data, can count on 26-28 deputies in the Chnmber of Citizens, which is undoubtedly a failure. Before the elections, a prominent opposition politician, who tends to be realistic and pragmatic, declared that coalition "Together" counts on 35 to 40 deputies, and that everything below 30 deputies would be an undoubted defeat. The fact that is the most crushing in this election statistics is that this alliance has won less votes than these same parties had won individually in previous elections three years ago. Awareness about it will probably bury for good the myth about union of the opposition as a universal solution and an adequate response to absolute favouritism of the Socialists and their allies.

The greatest surprise of these elections is a very sound result of the Serb Radical Party of Dr Vojislav Seselj, which practically none of the political observers paid any attention to because they were all focused on the race between the "left coalition" and the coalition "Together". The Radicals based their election campaign on equal distance from both the ruling block and the large opposition coalition, calling the ones and the others, in Seselj's usual manner, traitors of national interests. This proved to be more successful than "realistically" expected and the SRS won more votes than in the previous elections and the post-election calculations indicate that they could end up with as many as 13 or 14 deputies in the Chamber of Citizens. This means that it might easily happen that the Radicals will be the most powerful individual opposition party in Serbia (on the federal level), which had until just a few days ago, to many, maybe even to themselves, seemed impossible.

It is obvious that in post-Dayton Serbia, around the Radicals, a strong block of citizens is forming who cannot easily give up the dream about "Greater Serbia" and who are disappointed in Milosevic, considering him to have become "America's man", and who have never had any confidence in the parties of the coalition "Together". That is how Seselj, paradoxically, politically profited from the peace and Serbia's having remained within its post-World-War-Two borders: he won over for himself all those who cannot be reconciled with the fact.

Parties of national minorities fared according to expectations: the Alliance of Voivodina Hungarians (its President is Mayor of Subotica, Joseph Kasa) had good results in electoral units of Novi Sad, Subotica and Zrenjanin, and will most probably have three deputies; the List for Sandzak of Dr Sulejman Ugljanin won a decisive victory in Sandzak municipalities with majority Muslim population (JUL had expected to do well over there) and will undoubtedly be represented in the federal parliament. Despite the good result, Ugljanin and his supporters started a hunger strike out of protest, because they claim that many Muslims were prevented from voting since they had been deleted from registers of voters. Representatives of other parties also spoke about irregularities in many places, and the Radicals even demanded nullification of the elections altogether in Kosovo, due to great abuses. This is illustrated by the example of municipality of Djakovica where about two thousand Serbs live (the Albanians have again, as expected, boycotted the elections), and miraculously eleven thousand citizens voted in the elections...

One of the surprises of these elections is quite a sound result of the coalition "Voivodina" (the first on its list was Nenad Canak) which won two seats in the Federal Assembly and in many places - primarily in large cities of Voivodina - achieved results better than SPS/JUL/ND and the coalition "Together". It is obvious that the number of citizens of Voivodina who are highly discontented with the current rigid centralist system in the state is growing, and that many of them did not feel confident about benevolence of the greatest coalition concerning a high Voivodina autonomy.

In the shadow of the federal and the Montenrgin parliamentary, local elections also took place - muunicipal, city and provincial elections. This election race takes place according to the majority system in two rounds, so that uncertainty continues until 17 November in most of the electoral units. Pragmatic leader of the Democratic Party, Dr Zoran Djindjic, before the elections put special emphasis on the municipal and city elections and even superimposed them to the federal elections, because local victory brings effective power. Djindjic made a sound assessment that the greatest success of the opposition - primarily of the coalition "Together" - would be winning majority in assemblies of large cities of Belgrade, Novi Sad, Nis and Kragujevac, and as many as possible municipal assemblies all around Serbia.

It can be said the the opposition indeed has fared better in large cities of Serbia than in small towns. The Socialists suffered a few big blows, such as the crushing defeat of the "sheriff of Nis", Mile Ilic, who had conducted an extremely aggressive campaign in his domain and who was used to being the unformal owner of Nis. Whether this success will become effective and turn into actual winning of power in the most essential points (where there is money, media, possibilities for political influence...) will also depend on discipline of the opposition voters to go to the polls in the second round of the elections and outvote the proverbially faithful and loyal voting machinery of the "left coalition".

Nevertheless, judging by the experience from the previous elections, the oppositionist "fear is deeper than hope", as Dobrica Cosic would say. If these elections are observed in the light of the logic "all or nothing", the opposition has suffered an unpleasant defeat. If the elections are observed as a possibility to begin seriously impairing the power of the Socialists and JUL - primarily by winning the major portion of local power - then the opposition still has a chance. For the beginning, instead of big words and finesounding talk about changes of everything overnight, the opposition leaders should persuade their sympathizers that it is worthwhile spending a few more minutes of their time to go to the polls on 17 September.

(AIM) Teofil Pancic