THE RULING PARTY IN RS AFTER THE ELECTIONS

The Last Big Job

What will happen when the results reveal that the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) won confidence of only one quarter of the citizens who had come to the polls

AIM Banja Luka, 4 December, 1997

Immediately after the polling stations had been closed and the first election results from a few "representative" municipalities had started to arrive in the Republican Electoral Commission, the head of the SDS headquarters Vlado Vrkes publicly declared "another great victory of this party". Shots were fired in Pale, as the local custom dictates, and there was plenty to eat and drink as well, which is also a matter of a custom. Although perhaps he did not know what he was saying, Vrkes knew perfectly well why he was saying it. Sobering up was due to that greatly delayed, it had not occurred even nine days after the elections. Thes SDS once again showed that it did not need television at all in order to keep the people gathered around it in ignorance. That is why it is possible to hear from the "well-informed" in Pale that they have "screwed the world and Biljana again", that all they needed was two more votes to have the majority in the parliament (together with the Radicals), and that they would "buy them from among Biljana's followers, who were going to rack and ruin", that the "Muslims abroad have not voted at all, and the few who have, stuffed invalid ballots in the boxes". That is how the last carefree days are passing in Pale.

The narrow circle of the truly knowledgeable, however, know it all. If they had not, why would they have, just a few days before the elections, relieved of duty the president of the electoral commission Petko Cancar who had defected to the party of Biljana Plavsic, and brought their man to his place. The Republican Electoral Commission was charged to count the votes much before OSCE, which was not difficult, and to release the results into public, before it occurred to anybody to make certain other results public. Of course, even "Biljana's media" took the bait, so that the president of RS protested in vain the day after these "preliminary results" were published, claiming that these results were in no way binding for her. What has indeed really happened?

Hard-core Variant

It is generally known that in RS only the OSCE has the exclusive right to count votes and make the results public. The Republican Electoral Commission has almost the role of a group of citizens who happened to be in the vicinity of the ballot boxes with pencils and calculators. Of course, not only Biljana Plavsic complains about the work of the Commission. The leader of an opposition party brags around Banja Luka that in a place at the foot of Majevica there are 800 members of his party but in the elections only one vote was attributed to it. "I know that the Serbs tend to cheat, but this is really too much", he says. According to this calculus done without the votes from abroad where mostly the Muslims and the Croats voted, the SDS won 32.87 per cent, which together with 19.36 per cent won by the Radicals, amounts to a majority. It is impossible to claim that the Electoral Commission has fixed the elections, because only the result published by the OSCE is valid, which might mean that if anybody fixes the results, it can be done only by the foreigners.

The true sense was given to the whole affair a few days later by Aleksa Buha and Velibor Ostojic, who warned the officials of the OSCE Richard Elerkmann and Vladimir Kuznyetsov that a certain number of ballots from abroad which had arrived to the OSCE centre in Vienna were not accompanied by adequate documentation, in other words that fixing of results was possible. The SDS did everything it could do: it declared that it had the majority together with the Radicals, discreetly avoiding to mention that this referred only to the votes from within the entity, then warned the OSCE to beware thieves in its own ranks and settled down to wait for the official results. The OSCE could do nothing but declare that it was discouraged by acting of representatives of RS who participate in the election process. In the statement of the OSCE it is stated that representatives of RS ignored the prescribed manner of opening such issues, and that "they are interested more in making grand titles in newspapers than in observing the process of voting abroad". "Their incorrect and thoughtless words do not speak in favour of the manner in which the public observers the exceptional care the OSCE is taking to protect the election process, their rabble-rousing remarks incorrectly disgrace OSCE personnel who are engaged on the job", it is said in the statement.

And when the official results in the end show that the SDS has actually won support of only less than one quarter of the voters, that together with the Radicals they cannot reach even 40 per cent of the votes in parliament, people in Pale will be beside themselves, the central topic of all conversations will then be brought down to "catch the thief", people will be intimidated and feel cheated because even "Biljana's television" stated that the SDS had won. Of course, they are not at all naive in Pale: they believe that in this way atmosphere will be created for trading with OSCE which will be caught by surprise. The problem is, however, that nobody in the international community manifests either an excess of patience or a lack of force to get involved in the last large job with the SDS.

Soft-core Variant

If this could be marked as the hard-core variant in which rallies, conflicts with SFOR, hunger strikes of the unelected SDS deputies, and similar developments should not be eliminated, and their main characteristic is that they are easily stirred up, but that it is very difficult to extinguish them - the SDS has prepared a soft-core variant of the whole operation titled "The Socialists are Also Good People". The first among the equal in the collective Presidency of the SDS Aleksa Buha on the eve of the elections announced a coalition with national parties (Radicals) believing that the SDS would win the majority. After the elections, being one of the knowledgeable about the real situation, Buha extended criteria for a coalition partner, by saying that the SDS, along with the national, will enter the deal with patriotic parties as well. The Socialist Party of RS of Zivko Radisic is honoured with this flattering epithet, since until recently for the SDS it was the cat's paw of Slobodan Milosevic, a protagonist of treacherous policy and other things in this sense.

Immediately after that vice-president of the Radicals, Pantelija Damjanovic, who is also the manager of a Banja Luka hotel, inviting both the SDS and the Socialists to form a coalition government together, "because in the past elections the people have decided to give majority of their votes to these parties". At the same time, referring to sources close to the Socialists of RS, Beta agency published that Slobodan Milosevic was exerting pressure on the Socialist Party to enter the post-election coalition with the SDS. For Milosevic, the coalition of the Socialists and the SDS, as these sources claim, could be helpful in neutralizing the growing influence of Biljana Plavsic. There have been no explicit statements about the Socialists in Plavsic's Serb National Union, but this was done in their name by Dodik's independent Social Democrats who had invited the Socialists to form the government with these two parties.

It is impossible to know, of course, whose love is the least attractive for the leader of the Socialists Zivko Radisic - that of Buha, Damjanovic, Dodik or Milosevic. That is why he declared to Belgrade Radio B92 that it was still early for such talks and that his party was in favour of a government of experts which would at the same time be some kind of a government of national unity. This statement, which at first sight resembles finesounding empty talk actually conceals narrow straits in which the Socialists are seeking a way out. In other words, with their eyes fixed on Belgrade, they did not say NO either to the SDS or to the Radicals, but set the condition that both Dodik and Plavsic enter the coalition, whose names mentioned in Pale are experienced as an invitation to a seance with the satan. "Milosevic is pushing us into the arms of Pale, as if he did not know that if we go along with them, in the next elections not even members of our families would vote for us", said for AIM an official of the Serb Socialists who wished to remain anonymous. He added that there were two ways out for this party, since, as he said, "the story about a coalition of all Serb parties has no chance to succees". "We will either split into those loyal to the voters and those loyal to Belgrade, or Milosevic will give in under pressure exerted by the west and stop making Krajisnik's subjects of us. Until that time, we shall sit and wait", said this official.

Judging by the indications given to AIM from the team of Carlos Westendorp that the conference on Bosnia in Bonn where solutions will be reached based on an analysis of elections results, "will not bring RS any closer to a protectorate" - it is possible to conclude that the SDS in the future will not have the main say in RS in the future. Maybe that is a signal to Radisic's Socialists that they cannot sit and wait any longer. In Pale they do not wish to think about it. They need two more deoputies.

Ivan Djorðevic