STRUGGLE FOR THE LEADER

Serbia in Pre-election Rush

To differences among leaders of the Together coalition, the citizens say that they will also be exposed to the sound of whistles. It is believed that change of the regime is necessary primarily in order to establish the mechanism of easy change of regime in the future

AIM Belgrade, 10 May, 1997

Although according to the political calendar, the elections in Serbia for the republican parliament and the office of the president of Serbia should take place in the end of the year, it is becoming more and more evident that the election fever is already beginning to shake the political scene which is fluid as it is. Warming up for the elections is manifested in several ways. The ruling party has completed personnel changes by bringing back men once close to Milosevic: Milorad Vucelic who had in an inexplicable way disappeared from the post of the head of the group of Socialist deputies in the republican parliament, and Zeljko Simic, the President's ex-advisor who had also been removed in an unseemly manner. Due to the way in which they had been removed, connoisseurs of Serbian circumstances attributed their disappearance from the political scene by the influence of Dr Mira Markovic on her husband Slobodan Milosevic, since he did not oppose her in political decision-making. The come-back of these two caused guesses according to which Milosevic is finally wearing the pants in his house. The others tend to explain the personnel changes in the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) by its poor results in the past elections, so that now men are sought who are believed to have higher political capabilities than Sainovic, Covic and others whom Milosevic assessed not to be up to the task of competing with the increasingly dangerous opposition which is attacking the Serbian leader from all sides: from the nationalist Dr Vojislav Seselj to the civic option which is led by Together coalition.

The pre-election tension is increased even more by the difficult social and economic conditions which are strained to such an extent that the analysts of political circumstances are assessing that they might be decisive for scheduling elections much before the deadline. The public appearance of vice-president Ratko Markovic, known as an expert for constitutional law who is always ready to put his knowledge in the service of interests of the ruling party, also implies something of the kind, and he greatly flustered the opposition with his explanation that Milosevic may put up his candidacy for president of Serbia again, although he was elected twice already and in this way used the possibilities for holding this post prescribed by the Constitution.

On the other hand, the electorate is quite indifferent to the possibility announced by Prof. Markovic. It is considerably concerned by the fact that Together coalition seems to be more absorbed by itself than the pre-election jobs which must be done. It turned out that it is much more important for the coalition who its candidate for president will be, which caused disagreements the coalition is having problems in concealing, than persisting in the change of election rules and liberation of state media from the exclusive influence of the regime, because in current conditions the opposition is entering an unequal election competition. The coalition has postponed the set time limits by which election rules should be established and access to media for the opposition enabled, but the Serb Revival Movement (SPO), as one of the influential parties in it, nominated its leader Vuk Draskovic for the president of Serbia.

Zoran Djindjic, president of the Democratic Party did not like this, since he believed that there was no need to hurry with candidacies, which was interpreted by supporters of Vuk Draskovic and by himself as an attempt of Djindjic to seek for a candidate who has better chances than Draskovic to win in the elections. Differences had quite a disappointing effect, especially on those who persistently protested for three months because of the election fraud in local elections and by their perseverance forced the regime to give back to the coalition the mandates it had won in the elections. Despite the fact that the coalition did not find the best way to use the testing period in municipalities and cities it had won in, its credibility has not been damaged by that as much as by variances among the leaders, which is believed to be a struggle for power, and not as an effort to remove the regime under whose rule Serbia is living through its difficult period. Corruption in the institutions of the system reached disturbing proportions which causes the feeling of endangering the very survival of the state.

Fear that their state is in danger opened the eyes of the citizens who realized that in collective decadence there can be no individual salvation which many believed in until just recently, because everybody mostly minded their own business. Disappearance of the Republic of Serb Krajina which was ruled by corruption and the main preoccupation of whose leaders was their personal interest rather than that of its citizens, as well as the danger which is threatening Republica Srpska, "sobered up" the citizens of Serbia to such an extent that they resolutely refused to put their destiny in the hands of decision-makers they have lost confidence in. That is why they are less concerned about the intentions of Milosevic than by actions of those they are counting on to take his place.

Candidates for president of Serbia have started to spring up like mushrooms after rain, and this suits the regime just fine, because the larger the number of candidates, the smaller the choice offered to the electorate. The procedure of nomination of candidates is experienced as a process in which a leader is being offered to the Serbs, which is a repeated practice in Serbian comprehension of political activity, because the electorate is considered to be an impersonal mass which exists only in order to enable the leader to be elected. Unenviable social and economic circumstances, as well as the situation in the country in general, point out to a radical change of the opinion. At this moment the Serbs need a servant rather than a leader, but there does not seem to be such a personality on the political scene. In Serbian mentality, power is here believed to be an authorization to rule the people, and not to serve them. That is the cause of variances even among like-minded persons, especially when their vanity awakens.

Change of the authorities as it was done in Great Britain showed to the citizens that it can be done in a highly civilized manner. The Serbs wish for their political parties to take the example of such a practice, but they are at the same time aware that such a recipe cannot succeed here. Passions have gained ground and the wrath of the humiliating position of the citizens has reached the height of temperature in a boiling pot. The citizens have chosen the whistle as a peaceful weapon which, just as it did not spare the regime this past winter, has no intention to leave the coalition alone if it assumes characteristics of the regime, so that warnings are intensified that whistles have not been thrown away. In this sense, students' associations have the role of a means for exerting political pressure on main "players" in the forthcoming political competition. Some of the students' leaders succeeded in raising themselves above interests of political parties to an enviable level so that they deserved admiration for their political maturity. In this sense, student Cedomir Antic especially draws attention, since he sees the forthcoming elections as a temporary solution consisting of convening a constituent assembly with the task to adopt a new constitution which would establish democratic relations and an ambience which would help the leaders to understand confidence of the electorate as humbleness of a servant and not as arrogance of the leaders. Only after that the citizens would have the opportunity to control the authorities, and not to be treated by the regime as a hinderance, like a natural disaster it would gladly get rid of until the next elections.

Ratomir Petkovic (AIM)