Warnings Rise from Failed Election in Serbia

SERBIA: Warnings Rise from Failed Election
Vesna Peric Zimonjic - IPS 11/17/03

BELGRADE, Nov 17 (IPS) - Presidential elections failed for the third time in a little over a year in Serbia Sunday. The fragile democracy is in danger only three years after the ouster of former strongman Slobodan Milosevic. The danger comes from the failed democratic process and from the rise of the right, analysts say.

Only 38.6 percent of 6.5 million voters cast their ballots. The law requires at least a 50 percent turnout. Elections failed last year also because not enough people voted.

"The failure of the elections is the failure of democracy," leading analyst Vladimir Goati told IPS. "They have shown Serbia to be deeply divided between supporters of reforms and the ultranationalism of Milosevic's decade."

Ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) candidate Tomislav Nikolic led with 46.3 percent of the vote. His opponent Dragoljub Micunovic from the ruling Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) obtained 35.4 percent.

Nikolic's party was a close ally of Milosevic in the 1990s. Its leaders fanned nationalist hatred against non-Serbs, and took volunteers to wars in Croatia and Bosnia in 1991-95. Later they stoked anti-Western anger over the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombing in 1999.

Party leader Vojislav Seselj is on trial for war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague. Many see the SRS as a fascist party.

The party has found new support. Pro-democracy forces toppled Milosevic in 2000, but the majority of Serbs have seen little progress since. Improvement of living standards has been slow. The transition to the market economy has made tens of thousands jobless.

The extradition of Milosevic to The Hague to stand trial for war crimes deeply hurt the nationalist feelings of many Serbs.

"The large number of votes for Nikolic is a strong message to the pro- democracy forces," analyst Srdjan Bogosavljevic told IPS. "They are paying the price for their inefficiency, political intrigue and arrogance."

Corruption scandals have grown around the ruling elite for months now, as they had with the last regime.

The previously united DOS coalition that had toppled Milosevic in 2000 has split into several groups. Some former partners joined opposition parties in recent weeks to demand a vote of no confidence in the government. They asked their supporters to boycott the presidential elections Sunday.

The government dissolved parliament Nov. 13 and called fresh parliamentary elections Dec. 28.

The boycott call led to the lowest turnout yet for the presidential election. "It was a serious political defeat for supporters of democracy and reforms, because the nationalists showed what they can do," analyst Zoran Lucic told IPS.

"Serbia is going through a major crisis," foreign minister Goran Svilanovic acknowledged to reporters late Sunday night. "This is a political lesson for us, and the country is certainly going to see major setbacks in its efforts to get closer to the European Union, NATO Partnership for Peace Programme etc."

Serbia is now a country without president, with a dissolved parliament and a government that will last only until next month.

"This is a dangerous, dramatic phase of instability," deputy prime minister Zarko Korac said.

In neighbouring Croatia the major contest in parliamentary elections Nov. 23 is between the reform oriented Social Democratic Party that has ruled the country for the past three years, and the ultranationalist Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) of late Croatian president Franjo Tudjman.

Tudjman led Croatia to seek independence in 1991. That ignited the war in former Yugoslavia. Tudjman died in 1999, and his party lost the parliamentary elections the following year.

"The return of the right to power in Croatia would not be a good thing," analyst Stjepan Gredelj says. "A reversed road to democracy in both Serbia and Croatia can be dangerous."