ELECTIONS AS THE ONLY CHOICE

AIM, ZAGREB, March 12, 1997

The Transitional Administrator for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium, Jacques Paul Klein has obviously acquired some local manners because he called some of the events, in the modelling of which he had played an important role, historic. However, the calling of elections in the Croatian part of the Danube river valley, which Klein has announced for April 13, i.e. simultaneously with the elections in other parts of Croatia, truly represents - as the Provisional Administrator called it - a historic event. Naturally, elections will truly be such - under the condition that they really happen.

Klein's decision on the date of holding the elections and the forming of the Independent Democratic Serbian Party (SDSS) headed by Dr.Vojislav Stanimirovic, a day earlier, are two events which can be marked as the "running out of time" of the peaceful reintegration process. When on January 15, 1996 the retired American general Klein took over the administration of the officially called UNTAES region, or the region under the United Nations' Transitional Administration, two things were totally uncertain: could Klein's action succeed and could it really be concluded within the set timeframe of one year, with additional 12 months, if so demanded by one of the parties.

Now, a year and two months after the beginning of Klein's term, only one of the listed questions can be answered with certainty. Namely, Klein's mission will be over within the envisaged timescale, but it still remains to be seen whether it will be successful. Naturally, if we take the success to mean not only the peaceful reintegration of the region of Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium, but also of the people living there. And as far as that is concerned, things are none clearer irrespective of the fact that the overall process - by the formation of the party of local Serbs and calling of the elections - has come to the grand finale.

It was by no means easy for Stanimirovic to establish a party and win the leading position in it. This is attested by not only the "two-part" founding meeting, which first determined the party political programme and elected its thirty-three member Main Board, and then, a week later, elected its party president. Stanimirovic's narrow victory over Goran Hadzic (19 vs. 14 votes) does not only reflect the dramatic character of the battle fought within the local leadership, but also raises the question whether thus divided leadership is able of carrying through the reintegration to its finale. When we add to this a fact that Stanimirovic's election was, in a way, a result of a "political trickery", because he was elected only after an information was launched that a person without Croatian citizenship cannot be elected president of a political party with headquarters in that state (Stanimirovic has taken out Croatian documents, while allegedly, Hadzic has not), and the alleged comments of the defeated Hadzic's followers that things "could be settled in the streets too", it becomes clear that neither Stanimirovic not Klein can be certain that the option they are "betting on" is be the "winning combination".

In a recent interview Vojislav Stanimirovic was asked to comment on the split in the local Serbian leadership as well as to say how much the fact that Croatia sees him as a representative of a moderate and cooperative part of leadership, made his job harder or easier. He answered indirectly, saying that among the local Serbian leaders there were men who only cared for acclamation and who "were still waiting for something to happen", making unrealistic promises to the local population on the political autonomy, integrity of the region and the granting of some special rights within Croatia. While some men around Stanimirovic openly say that people from Hadzic's stream have obviously not heard yet that Knin has fallen, Stanimirovic repeats the same story, but in a somewhat roundabout fashion: "One thing is what you have at your heart, but the reality is something else".

It was this Hadzic's stream that insisted on the holding of a referendum just before the elections in order to show - they explained - whether the desire for the region of Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium to be integral was a wish of only a "handful of extremists" or of "the majority of the local Serbian population". It was their answer to Klein and the international community who warned that no referendum could at that point change the planned course of events, according to which the present UNTAES region would become an integral part of the Republic of Croatia after the elections. As far as the referendum was concerned, Stanimirovic agreed with the view of Ivica Vrkic, Commissioner of the Croatian Government in charge of peaceful reintegration, that the organization of a referendum would be only a waste of political energy and that it would be much better for the Serbs - those who wanted to remain living in Croatia - to dedicate that energy to the preparation of and participation in the elections.

However, although it seems that there will be no referendum after all and that the fact that it was not held

• as well as the election of Stanimirovic for the SDSS helmsman - will show which force in the local Serbian leadership has prevailed, the fact that several thousand of people take part in daily peace protests in Vukovar with a basic demand for the "political integrity of the region", confirms that the battle within the ranks of local leadership is not over yet. The more so, because the Vukovar daily protests, no matter how peaceful they might be, carry a germ of possible incident, which according to Stanimirovic, could easily be imported from either Croatia or FR Yugoslavia. He is quite right when he says that there are forces on both sides to whom the provoking of an incident and possible Croatian police action would suit very much indeed.

Klein's calling of the elections is a result of a more or less successful compromise he managed to reach, as it seemed, between the irreconcilable demands of the Croatian and the Serbian side. While Croatia insisted for the region presently under Klein's administration, to be administratively divided in accordance with the territorial organization of districts, i.e. for eastern Slavonia, Baranja and western Sirmium to be divided between two districts - Vukovar-Srijem and Osijek- Baranja district - the Serbs insisted on only one district. When it turned out that such a solution was impossible, the Serbs threatened with a referendum for which they found grounds in item 12 of the Erdut Agreement. Namely, it includes a not very precisely defined possibility of establishing "alliances of Serbian communes" which proved unfeasible as the "Croatian perfidious tailoring of communal borders" (Stanimirovic) was done in such a way so that the Serbs could not have a majority even there where they really are.

The Provisional Administrator Klein exerted much effort and covered many miles between Vukovar - Zagreb - Belgrade - Bruxelles - New York in order to come out with a compromise proposal, because of which he himself had to retailor communal borders. On the day he announced the holding of elections he stated his decision by which he granted the status of communes to Negoslavci, Sodolovci, Markusici and Jagodnjak (which was not envisaged by the Croatian communal division), and as far as the two disputable requests were concerned - the formation of the communes of Tenja and Mirkovci - he proposed a compromise solution. Namely, Croatia strongly opposed the granting of communal status to these two places - from which Osijek and Vinkovci were intensively shelled - suggesting instead that they become local committees within the two towns. However, Klein found a compromise in the formula according to which Tenja and Mirkovci would have a status of "transitional communes" which would "as such, gradually cease to exit one year after the elections and start functioning normally as local committees of the communes of Osijek, i.e. Vinkovci".

No matter to what extent this Klein's proposal might be a compromise, it will not meet with the understanding of precisely those forces of which the transitional administrator frequently warned, calling them "local political extremists on both sides" who hinder the process of peaceful reintegration. Although he never - at least not publicly - named them, some of them (Glavas and Mate Simic, President of the Association of the Croatian Refugees on the Croatian side; and Hadzic and Miroslav Keravica, the Serbian Mayor of Vukovar, on the Serbian) were able to recognize themselves. And if we add to this the electoral list of Tomislav Mercep and his statements that, if he wins the election and becomes the district-prefect of Vukovar, it will, perhaps, then finally become clear to the Serbs that they have no business in that region, it is more than clear that Klein's aspirations towards the successful conclusion of the mission hang by a thread. The influence of these forces on the forthcoming developments will be more than great, while the heated emotions which are slowly cooling down on both sides, are no ally to either Klein or Vrkic, but rather those who think that "Knin has not fallen yet", i.e. that peaceful reintegration is but a poor substitute for a triumphant march of the army into Vukovar.

The whole story about reintegration of the Croatian Danube river valley and its final denouement have certainly another dimension and will depend on the balance of forces within the Croatian political leadership, where the disposition towards shady pre-election games and numerous combinations, in regard to which each side is certain that its is the "winning" one, offers different scenarios. However, it does not offer a reliable answer to the question whether Klein's mission will be concluded with the reintegration of the region without the local population, or again with it. Or perhaps they will work put a compromise whose key word could be "percentage", about which everyone will bargain, but in the end meet halfway. Halfway, but between the two "guardians".

DRAGO HEDL