The Missing Three

The Socialists have achieved a predictable paradox, in spite of the misery they have created, they have managed to collect 1,568,000 votes, or 3% more than last year; in fact, more votes than any single other party, all with the hazy promise that Serbia will "remain proud". The Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) lacks three seats in the Assembly for a majority, and for the time being they can't find an adequate coalition partner for the setting up of a government. If they do manage to form a government, it will be supported by one million people less than during the time when the SPS laughed while Seselj vilified the opposition. The government will have 5,300,000 voters against it, voters who know that they are being subjected to new acts of humiliation daily.

A potentially dangerous and explicitly nationalistically oriented ethnic Albanian population remains outside the Assembly, as well as a great number of abstainers in other parts of Serbia. Compared to last year's 30% their number has risen to 38%. A large number of abstainers, especially if this number comes close to half the electorate, usually gives the ruling party the mandate, but in unstable times, this can be dangerous, because the dissatisfaction is not socialized and does not lead to a resolving of conflicts in the Assembly, but on the streets.

The SPS voting body consists of an inert social coalition with the authorities, a group which is satisfied with crumbs given it from the state's empty coffers. They are joined by social groups without political organizations, such as farmers, who, being used to suffering and getting along somehow, remain politically linked to those in authority, even though their administration of the state is catastrophic. The farmers find consolation in the fact that war would be worse.

On the other hand, a compact social coalition has not yet emerged, one which would force a way out of the crisis. After the latest elections, an eventual minority SPS government will be challenged by ideologically and politically divergent parties, representing over 2 million young voters in the Assembly. Viewed politically, there are great differences between them. On the one hand there is the so-called "3D" opposition (the Democratic Party - DS, the Democratic Party of Serbia - DSS and the Democratic Movement of Serbia - DEPOS. Within DEPOS there are great differences in stands between the Civic Alliance and some nationalist intellectuals). On the other hand, parties which represent national minorities, like the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Vojvodina (DZVM), or the ethnic Albanian coalition. The third option consists of Seselj, now a trainee democratic opposition member, who is telling the Socialists that they don't know how to implement the national program.

Altogether, this is a different situation from the one in 1990, when the SPS was protected by Slobodan Milosevic's authority, a man viewed by the military establishment as a new Tito, one who would save Socialism and Yugoslavia. Nationalist intellectuals believed him to be a Serbian Churchill. At the time the government enjoyed the support of 2,320,000 voters who expected to live in a Socialist system with a Swedish standard of living and in peace. Instead they got war, destruction and the disintegration of the state. Unfortunately, they failed to notice the difference.

After the second elections the "national-patriotic" SPS proclaimed the disintegration of the state its success in the "battle for national interests"; thousands of people were uprooted and the area between the Kupa River and the Drina River was depopulated, thanks to "concern for our brethren"; the cities in which these same brethren lived were destroyed in the name of "protecting centuries-old hearths". At the next elections (December 1992) the SPS won around 1,350,000 votes. Together with the SRS votes, the SPS government received the support of an even greater number of voters than it had in the previous period - nearly 2,400,000 pro-government voters believed that a "Greater Serbia" would break up the "new world order" and set up new borders in Western Serbia.

President Milosevic dissolved the farcical Assembly and promised a "struggle against fascism", just as he had promised a "battle against crime" the previous year. The project failed. SPS attempts at breaking Seselj ended in a debacle. The SRS withstood great pressures and won 593,000 votes (compared to 1,060,000 at the previous election). Seselj kept the initiative and tried to transfer his interests to the social field, he continued to accuse the authorities of corruption and crime, while his political stands became closer to those of the so-called democratic opposition which started to accept him without too much embarrassment.

In the heat of the campaign, the SPS abandoned their hate campaign against Seselj and redirected it against the democratic center. Thanks to Seselj's presence, President Milosevic will now try to sell the story that all in Belgrade are nationalists except for him. This could fall on fertile ground, since the West is looking for moral justification for its deals with Milosevic. CIA reports recently published in the "New York Times" contend that there is no alternative to Milosevic in Belgrade. It is believed that President Milosevic is sufficiently alarmed to reach the conclusion that only an agreement in Bosnia would ensure the lifting of sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro. Otherwise, Bosnian Moslems could postpone a peace agreement in order to see if political chaos in Serbia would strengthen their position.

It is true that the democratic opposition in Serbia is infected with the national virus, and that xenophobia is widespread among Serbs, but a thesis on the revival of nationalism among the Serbian opposition is an ignorant claim, and fails to give a true picture of this campaign. Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) leader Vuk Draskovic placed the main accent on describing the reasons for Serbia's economic, social and national downfall when he spoke of doing away with borders, of a reconciliation with Moslems in Bosnia, and tried to infect a biased political public with the idea of a peaceful life together. Risking conflicts in his party, Draskovic systematically moved the SPO towards a civic option.

Of the other big opposition parties, only the DSS led by Vojislav Kostunica rooted more strongly for the nationalist option. Kostunica tried to distance himself from the war, but not from Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. Kostunica didn't achieve much of a success, since the nationalist option had been exploited by many, long before he got to it.

The SPS and SRS election results show that a part of the SRS voters have gone back to the SPS, while at least 200,000 have gone elsewhere, and can probably be found among the abstainers. The attempt at installing Party of Serb Unity (SSJ) leader Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan as an "instant Seselj" has cost a lot of money. The travelling festival of folk singers, "Tigers" and others, came up with only 40,000 votes, and didn't manage to bring a single deputy seat, which the SPS counted on for the setting up of a new, discreet coalition.

The Socialists's experiment in promoting the United Left (one of its leaders is Mrs. Milosevic) also failed to produce results, in spite of an attempt to cash in on an echo of Milosevic's authority via his wife Mirjana Markovic. The result was 34,000 votes.

The so-called independent groups of candidates such as the "Group of Citizens for Slobodan Milosevic" did the regime's work in small towns. They didn't return seats to the Assembly, but they did disperse the votes of those who didn't wish to vote for the ruling party.

In the last two years the democratic opposition has challenged the government, citing the support of 1.5 million voters. At least half this number were prepared to take part in various non-parliamentary methods of pressure, so that the authorities were forced to unscrew some safety valves, to drop their symbol, change their ideology and the party's name.

Since the opposition didn't know how to wrench the driving wheel from a regime incapable of handling the situation, the state, army and national currency were destroyed. The Socialists didn't want to hand over power in the state they had ruined. By strengthening the police and television, the regime frequently called elections, and conducted a dirty campaign, always promising a new beginning with a familiar outcome. The authorities managed to get away with this because the departing elite which enjoyed the mass support of the older generation, had no sense of responsibility towards its offspring, while the offspring weren't capable of pensioning them off. In such an atmosphere, changes are made at a snail's pace. Last year DEPOS and the DSS won 789,196 votes. Working separately this year, they collected around 150,000 more votes, which wasn't productive, considering that the dispersion of votes cost DEPOS more than it did the DSS in the number of deputy seats (see box).

The Democratic Party jumped from last year's 194,000 votes to a record 496,000 this year. This means that the so-called 3D opposition parties in parliament are now stronger by 300,000 votes, but they could have been stronger by at least another 100,000 votes if two political catastrophes had not hit the center. The Farmer's Party of Serbia (SSS) led by Milomir Babic won 65,000 votes, doing a little better than last year, but didn't enter parliament. (The SPS won 21 seats in Kosovo with a similar number of votes.) The Vojvodina Reformists have left the political scene. Their Democratic Coalition of Vojvodina lost mandates in Novi Sad by half a percent, having dispersed around 40,000 votes.

The period of political transition in Serbia has turned out to be rather complicated. The disintegration of Caesarean populism which had been prepared for a decade, and activated in 1987 when Milosevic came to power, was followed by war and the disintegration of a state which had been created with great sacrifices and the hopes of the best in the previous generations. This process is still not over and consists of a general falling apart of the system, camouflage, special actions, police infiltration in politics, the interference of the army in political processes, propaganda smoke screens, warmongering, slander, the instigating of crime, changing convictions, mass hypnosis and the loss of common sense as a guiding light.

Regardless of how complicated it all appears to be, in the reigning confusion, among those who still consider themselves to be the opposition, all agree on two things: the regime must not be allowed to go on lying (the law on television) and it must be stopped from stealing (an investigation on the activities of private bankers Jezdimir Vasiljevic and Dafina Milanovic.

Antrfile

The SPS Get off Cheapest

The number of votes needed for one seat in Parliament

Party Number of votes

DSS 31,060

DZVM 22,491

DS 17,104

DEPOS 15,845

SRS 15,201

SPS 12,748