STRUGGLE FOR CITIES

Local Elections in Serbia

AIM Belgrade, 20 November, 1996

However counting of votes after the second round of the local elections in Serbia (held on Sunday, 17 November) may end, the fact that will be registered in history is that it was in these elections that the fortress of inviolable power of the Socialists has started to tumble down. From the bottom. Because, with the exception of Krusevac, Sabac, Valjevo, Pristina and Smederevo, everything else in Serbia that even resembles a city will in the future be ruled by the opposition, that is by the coalition "Together". In Belgrade and Kragujevac, the Socialists have (although with ill grace) admitted that these cities will be handed over to the opposition, in Novi Sad where out of 70 seats in the city assembly they have won only 6, they still refrain from admitting defeat, while in Nis, which they have also lost, they are quite openly trying to impose the logic that it is not important "how people vote, but how the votes are counted". Attempts to save what little there is to save are registered in Pancevo, Jagodina, Kraljevo, Pirot, Uzice and many other cities where election results are nullified and the third elections round scheduled. Until they win.

Elections are nullified solely in polling stations where representatives of the coalition "Together" have won, and complaints due to alleged irregularities (only in Belgrade there were about 460) are lodged solely by members of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS). The fact that the Socialists are complaining about election results is happening for the first time since 1990 and it probably reflects best the new political reality brought about by these elections in Serbia. Attempts to cancel the victory of the opposition and deny the so far so significant "will of the people", caused on Tuesday night (when the legal time limit for publicizing election results expired) gatherings of tens thousand people on the squares of many cities. The situation in all these cities was more or less similar: in front of the municipality building - thousands of wrathful people, inside - city election committee which nullifies the elections (sometimes it seems only because it was "noticed" that certain voters were frowning during the elections) and all around - disinterested members of special police units. Tensions were the highest in Nis where at a moment more than 20 thousand people protested and where the further course of developments is quite unpredictable. Regardless of the will of the citizens, local authorities in Nis seem to be persistently trying to prove that in the regular election competition it is impossible to win power in this city, in other words that it is worth trying only in the streets. The leader of the Democratic Party, Dr Zoran Djindjic, believes that the attempt to deprive the opposition of 19 seats it won in Nis and organize new elections, is actually an open "call to uprising".

A day after the elections, similar words in Belgrade streets were uttered by the leader of the Serb Revival Movement, Vuk Draskovic. Dissatisfied with the work of the Belgrade electoral committee, he called people to make a re-run of the "9 March" in case of cheating. In the end in Belgrade, everything ended without repetition of 9 March - absolute majority of the opposition in City Assembly was recognized, and voting will be repeated "only" for 10 seats, which cannot endanger the victory of the coalition "Together" nor prevent Dr Zoran Djindjic from becoming the first opposition mayor of Belgrade.

Whatever may happen in the third, fourth or fifth election circle, Serbia has nevertheless got a new political map on which at this moment the following stands: out of 189 municipalities, the Socialist have power in 144, coalition "Together" in 44, and Seselj's Radicals in one (Zemun). The opposition will in the future rule the territory where 60 per cent of the population of Serbia live, it will control four university centres, the biggest part of industries, banks and almost 100 per cent of foreign trade, mostly located downtown Belgrade - on the move between Slavija and Kalemegdan. Not even all this, however, was enough for the regime controlled media to notice in the first days after the elections that the local power in Serbia is moving somewhere else. One should say shamelessly (if there is anything in Serbian journalism that is shameless), a new triumph of the Left is described and admiration expressed for the "unbelievable and convincing triumph" of the coalition of left forces in, for example, Alibunar or Zagubica, while concerning Belgrade it was said that over there "expected results" were not achieved.

In majority of state-controlled media, it was not noticed either that about ten thousand people, soon after closing of the polling stations on Sunday night, came out into Belgrade streets and that during that night, in general euphoria, it was proposed that the new liberation day of the city be 17 November instead of 20 October. Due to silence in the media, a few days after the elections, many people from the interior of Serbia kept calling their relatives and friends from Belgrade to ask who had won in the elections in the capital. On state television everything remained unchanged: export and production continued to grow as almost nowhere in the world. But, the Socialists suddenly ceased opening the already three times opened hospitals, clinics and airports built during the Second World War, such as for example the one in Ecka near Zrenjanin. That evening, while Draskovic, Djindjic and Vesna Pesic, President of the Civic Alliance of Serbia, were celebrating in their election headquarters and in Belgrade streets, the Socialists asked the journalists to leave premises of the SPS because they had nothing to tell them.

Since that evening, it seems that Nebojsa Covic, the former mayor of Belgrade, with his pager and mobile phone, also remained speechless, and people from his immediate environment have already started looking for new jobs although leaders of the opposition are swearing that they will not sack a single expert only because of ideological convictions. Those who are well informed claim that in the night after the elections it was very noisy at the meeting at which Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic was "nagging" those who had not carried out their party tasks before the elections. The first on the list of sinners seems to have been Republican Prime Minister Mirko Marjanovic who was reproached for not having provided the money for pensions which should have been paid before the second round of elections. Right behind him on the list of sinners were Nebojsa Covic and President of Belgrade Socialists, Branislav Ivkovic, who had "lost the battle for Belgrade", partially because they had both aimed at the post of the mayor. The third candidate of the left coalition for mayor, President of the Belgrade Yugoslav Left (JUL) organization, Slobodan Cerovic, did not make it even for a deputy in the City Assembly. To a Belgrade daily he lamented that he did not know "why our electorate failed its duty".

Apart from the authorities, the victory of the opposition in all the biggest cities of Serbia seems to have caught the opposition itself just as unprepared. It could be rightfully said that such outcome of the elections made every rule of logic a mere lie and once again showed that behavior of the electorate in Serbia can hardly be explained by referring to any rational argument. Last time, analysts were surprised in 1993 when people, straight from queuing for bread and milk, and mostly hungry, went to vote for those who had promised them Swedish standard of living and all-Serb state. This time the fact which evades any logic is that the same electorate in just fourteen days drastically changed its opinion and globally (on the federal level) supported the authorities, and locally the opposition. At first sight it does not look very logical either that the left coalition got just six mandates in Novi Sad and that at the same time in the elections for the Assembly of Voivodina it won with almost two-thirds majority. As concerning the Voivodina parliament, everything becomes much clearer if one knows that three candidates got into the second round in these elections. According to the rule, they were one from the SPS-JUL coalition, one Radical and one from the coalition "Together" or "Voivodina".

The opposition was splitting its votes in two directions and in this way cleared the passage for the left block towards a certain victory. Instead of a real analysis of what was happening between the two rounds, as an explanation of the newly created situation, the first thing that started circling was a slightly malicious joke which is not too favourable for the opposition. According to the joke, many voters (especially the elderly ones) had thought that the word "Together" on the ballots meant in fact that Sloba and Mira (Milosevic and his wife) were running together. That is why they had decided to vote for "Together" having in mind something else. Soon after jokes, first analyses appeared, and as the reason for the election change difference between election rules applied in the federal and those in the local elections were mentioned. Examples from other countries were also mentioned, where the practice of the so-called "cross voting" is quite widespread. In Italy, for example, Christian Democrats enjoyed confidence of the nation to lead the state for decades, while as a rule the Communists were trusted on the local level.

Something similar has happened in Serbia: Milosevic was entrusted with guarding of the federal state, and the biggest cities were given, by the will of the voters, to the coalition "Together" to manage. Some people immediately hurried to conclude that the average voter in Serbia does not identify with the federal state in which he lives and votes by inertia on that level. A good deal of the explanation for the sudden change in the disposition of the electorate between the two election rounds, could perhaps be sought in the behavior of the authorities and the opposition. The Socialists, themselves lulled by the victory in the federal elections, with their triumphant behavior lulled their own electorate and made it passive. Contrary to them, the opposition started the campaign from door to door and motivated the people to go to the polls for the second time and vote for changes. The victory in large industrial centres and typical workers' environments is explained by Vesna Pesic with the thesis that the workers had understood well the program of the coalition "Together". That is why workers from Rakovica have not voted for managers' parties - SPS and JUL, but for themselves. Zoran Djindjic explained the change of the disposition of the electorate with the following words: "On the federal level, television of Serbia won, and in the local ones - it was the people of Serbia. In the future we shall see which Serbia will prevail". This time it proved that the membership was not too ready to follow its party leaders all the way. Between the two rounds of the elections, the leaders mostly called their own membership to vote only for their party representatives and not to join any "technical" coalitions with the others from the opposition. In the end it turned out that the membership had not obeyed them to the end. Success of the coalition "Together" in all the major cities was probably impossible without the support of the Radicals who had been called by Seselj to vote only for themselves. At the same time, the Radicals would have never won 33 deputy seats and power in Zemun if they had not been supported by the coalition "Together" which is so odious to them.

It seems that money had played the smallest role in these elections. On the local level, those who had invested the most in the campaign did the worst in the elections. For instance, Slobodan Radulovic, manager of C Market, the greatest trading firm in Serbia, dropped out already in the first round. On the eve of the elections he had opened more supermarkets around Belgrade than he won votes in his election unit. Many others who had held privileged positions concerning presentation in the media fared similarly badly. One could even say that the electorate in a way punished all those who belonged to the world of well-known citizens. Representatives of the opposition unknown to the public (in some cases even students) easily got the better of famous actors, surgeons or managers. Similar could be said about certain oppositionists. Vice-President of the Serb Radical Party, Maja Gojkovic lost from an unknown peasant, known only for being the father of fourteen children. In the very first night after the elections, opposition leaders promised a great deal. Vojislav Seselj claimed that the first Radical municipality Zemun would be "experimental" in many ways. Djindjic announced social and economic revival of Serbia, while Draskovic insisted most on the fact that "the best and the most honest people from the SPS are welcome" because the winners did not wish to be "ideologically one-sided".

The impression is, however, that even the winners themselves cannot comprehend the proportions of their victory and what they will be able to do with it. At first sight, not much, in view of the fact that cities in Serbia have for a long time now been considerably deprived of power and that money was in due time transferred into the hands of those who rule on the higher levels of authoritiy. According to the principle - money to us and problems to you. The gain is for the time being mostly psychological. If transfer of power actually occurs, ordinary people will finally see for themselves that something might be changed by elections even in Serbia. They will primarily realize that local Socialist power-wielders are nothing but mortals who can lose the elections. And not just local ones. Next elections for the republican parliament which will be held next year will take place in quite a different milieu. Many local media in Serbia will soon change "owners" or be "liberated", as it is usually said in oppositionist vocabulary, which means that space will be created in them for quite different tones from the monotonous one which at present is predominate in them. In any case, it could hardly happen again that 30 thousand workers of Nis demonstrate in the streets of this city and that none of the five local television stations see it. Or that a local newspaper proclaims workers on strike mercenaries and enemies of this city. In the future one could count on a situation in which such a strike would be supported by the local authorities. They could even join the strikers and go to Belgrade with them and ask for money from the Republican and the Federal Government. And (at least in the beginning) there will certainly be less money than before, because the departing local authorities will most probably do their best to set up as many barricades as they can wherever they turn. That is why the attempt of the opposition to show how it essentially differs from the current authorities and how it is capable of efficient resolution of important problems on the local level, will be accompanied by many still unpredictable troubles.

The fact that also contributes to unpredictability and non-transparentness of the situation is that a day or two after the elections it is still impossible to discern what the departing Socialists will "burn" after themselves in order to compromise their successors from the very start. In the case of Belgrade, destiny of television station Studio B is the least certain, whose editor-in-chief already declared that he would not be doing this job for long. Those who are better informed about what is going on behind the locked doors of the city Assembly, claim that things with Studio B stand quite differently and that coalition "Together" will not get hold of it. in case the attempt of "ownership transformation" and the alleged sale of this radio and tv station to SPS-controlled firms fails, there is always the Republican Government which can take away its channel. In the opposition they say they will "fight" for Studio B.

Although there are few at the moment who can assume what is going to happen and how (if at all) transfer of power will take place, in other words, whether Milosevic will try to hold all the cities he has lost hostages, as Tudjman is doing with Zagreb, it can already be said with certainty that in Serbia time has come when politics will have to be taken quite seriously. At the same time, it seems that time has also come to close down the casino in Serbia in which only one player - Slobodan Milosevic - has been winning so far.

(AIM) Nenad Lj. Stefanovic