January 6, 2004

SERBIAN ELECTION: INSTABILITY CONTINUES

by Srdja Trifkovic

The result of Serbia's parliamentary election held on December 28 was depressingly unsurprising. It will bring neither political stability nor economic recovery to the long-suffering Balkan nation. The nationalist Radical Party led by Vojislav Seselj is now the largest single political force (81 deputies in the 250-seat assembly), followed by Vojislav Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS, 53 mandates), the Democratic Party of the late Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic now led by Boris Tadic (DS, 37 seats), the G17 Plus led by Miroljub Labus (34 seats), the Serbian Renewal Movement of Vuk Draskovic (SPO, 23 seats) and the Socialist Party headed by the country's former President Slobodan Milosevic (SPS, 22 seats).

The good news is that the parties of Milosevic and his one-time junior partner Seselj-both incarcerated at the "international community's" pleasure in The Hague-remain well short of 126 deputies and therefore cannot return to power. Their electoral success was largely a vote of protest built on three factors: general disappointment with the scandals and corruption that plagued the old government dominated by the Democratic Party; an even more widely spread disgust at the continuing pressure on Serbia to surrender the remnants of its dignity to the Hague war crimes tribunal; and the failure of economic reforms carried out thus far to improve living standards. Both Milosevic and Seselj have been out of power long enough to make their own record of misrule and corruption less vivid in people's memory. Sickened by DOS, many Serbs saw the vote for the Radicals as the clearest way to voice their disapproval of the past three years. Not for the first time they voted less "for" a party and its program, and primarily against their present rulers.

In addition Milosevic's spirited (albeit doomed) defense at the Tribunal has won him grudging respect even among those who took to the streets in October 2000 to bring him down. As Mark Steyn noted in The Washington Times, back then he was a discredited figure, a reviled pariah, but after two years of legal hair-splitting at The Hague, he is all but fully rehabilitated: "True, Mr. Milosevic, conducting his own defense, has been a shameless showboater, but not half as shameless as the absurd prosecutor Carla del Ponte. It's received wisdom among battered Serbian democrats that every indictment of Mrs. Ponte's drove Mr. Milosevic's vote numbers higher. Had Serbs prosecuted Mr. Milosevic, that would have been one thing. But once it became Euro-preeners prosecuting Serbs, an understandable resentment set in."

The bad news is that an alliance capable of commanding a simple parliamentary majority may in the end look very much like the old, discredited DOS coalition that has ruled Serbia for the past three years. That would be a government that would include Kostunica's center-right "moderate nationalists," Draskovic's monarchists, Tadic's mafioso-style "pro-Western reformers," and Labus's G-17 post-nationalist technocrats. This is the scenario strongly advocated by both Washington and Brussels, but it would be inherently unstable. The four parties would be united only in the desire to keep the old Radical-Socialist tandem out of power. They represent very different visions of the nation's future and are unlikely to agree on a common economic, social, and foreign policy platform.

Kostunica is the key player in the ongoing negotiations because he is the only lider with whom all others are willing to create a coalition. He now faces a dilemma: to try and create a broadly based government that would include all parliamentary parties, to give in to Western pressure and include the DS in a "reformist" coalition (which he had pledged not to do), or to try to form a minority government with the G-17 and Draskovic, a government that may include one DS minister (probably Tadic himself) but keep the Democrats out of power. That would also be an unstable formula but the new parliament should not be seen as a four-year solution anyway. A new election before the year's end that would further narrow the field is preferable to a coalition paralyzed by internal dissent.

If Kostunica succumbs to pressure and agrees to a reformist coalition that would include the DS, he would repeat the mistake from December 2000 when his popularity and authority enabled the rest of DOS to come to power thanks to his votes. That mistake has already reduced his support from over a half of Serbia's voters in those heady days three years ago to under a fifth today.

Kostunica may know better this time: on January 5 he declared that the country is in such grave crisis that it needs a "government of national consensus" that would include all parliamentary parties-Socialists and Radicals included. This is a nifty move. The anticipated refusal of "pro-Western" parties to enter any government that would include Milosevic's and Seselj's supporters would make them vulnerable to the charge that they follow not Serbia's interests but foreign instructions. Furthermore, if the Radicals were to share power, they would be forced to control their language and emotions-fiery rhetoric is cheap without the burden of shared responsibility-and could eventually reinvent themselves as a more internationally accepted party of the Right. Last but not least, a broad coalition that would include all parliamentary parties would be the easiest way to draft a new constitution; the inability of the DOS-dominated parliament to do so over the past three years has resulted in the paradox that Serbia still operates under Milosevic's constitution that was tailor-made to his political requirements.

The real trouble for Serbia is that, even if Kostunica does the right thing and creates a broad coalition, even if he is subsequently elected Serbia's president, he may be unable to reverse the effective collapse of its economy and society which had been well under way before Milosevic's fall on October 5, 2000. The country's woes may be incurable without strong ledership that could inspire the nation, reconsolidate the state, and confront the kleptocrats unleashed by Djindjic and his heirs. Kostunica has lacked that much needed strong leadership thus far, his good intentions and personal integrity notwithstanding. In the next few weeks he will have one last opportunity to correct that failure.

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