The Radical Cut

Vojislav Seselj, leader of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), was thrown to the ground and arrested on June 3rd in Gnjilane, Kosovo while addressing some 100 sympathizers. His second in command Tomislav Nikolic, SRS parliament deputies, Ranko Babic and Milorad Jevric, were also arrested along with some 20 others. The Radicals leaders got sentences under misdemeanor charges ranging from 10 to 30 days which were later commuted to more time in jail by a higher court. Seselj is waiting for his sentence to be commuted while this article goes to press.

The way the Radicals described the incident, the police even drew their handguns when Seselj started speaking and pressed them against his forehead. A gun went off injuring deputy Filip Stojanoic and a police officer. A short police statement said the incident was caused by the Radicals. There were no independent reports from the scene since reporters did not expect anything to happen.

Seselj and the other party leaders arrived in central Gnjilane after a rally in Leskovac where he spoke for an hour to a crowd of some 2,000 tired people. There wasn't a big crowd in Gnjilane since the local radio station reported repeatedly that the rally had been banned and the public address system wasn't there because the owner changed his mind about renting it.

The rally in Gnjilane was formally banned by the local authorities (the local police chief is the former police chief of Leskovac) who later explained that public gatherings in the center of the town were banned in principle and that they could be held near the local textile plant if it wasn't a market day. Under that interpretation Seselj was planning to use market day and a theater festival to rally a large crowd and hide his weakness.

The ensuing political scandal showed the decision wasn't taken at local level. The administrative boards of the Serbian and Federal parliaments met urgently to remove the immunity of the SRS deputies the following night without even informing all board members.

Democratic Party (DS) Serbian parliament board members, Ljiljana Lucic and Dusan Bajec, sent a formal protest to Speaker Dragan Tomic which said "the scheduling of the administrative board session at 3:00 a.m. shows the ruling party's fear of the public".

The authorities obviously wanted to temporarily immobilize the SRS leaders and subject their leader, who claims to be the fiercest regime opponent, to further degradation by sending him to jail for a misdemeanor like a common hooligan.

The opposition public was not happy that the leader of the third strongest parliamentary party was being arrested and his immunity removed over a 20 day sentence. Protests by opposition parties were less restrained than they were the last time he was arrested when opposition politicians wondered whether Seselj deserved to be defended. Vojislav Kostunica (Democratic Party of Serbia) warned: "What can ordinary citizens expect when you treat parliament deputies in that way." The Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) said "the ban on rallies for political parties means a ban on their activities".

Interestingly, a communist (Latinovic) opposed the arrest.

The Serbian Socialist Party (SPS) condemned the Radicals and called their behavior war-mongering, violent, primitive and aimed at creating conflicts among Serbs.

The nationalist Serbian Unity Party (SSJ, headed by Borislav Pelevic while Arkan is away) waited a while for reports from the scene by its people and then concluded that the SRS leader was fully responsible for the incident in Gnjilane. Their statement said he should be on the front in Herzegovina if he is a true patriot.

The Radicals said the real reason for the arrest was that "the Serbian President is preparing to recognize Bosnia and Croatia in their AVNOJ (pre-war) borders and fears Seselj and Nikolic at large so he has to arrest them"; i.e. that the regime fears the rally the SRS scheduled for June 17 "when Slobodan Milosevic should drop from power since so many people would gather that it would be clear what the people think".

It's not certain that the Radicals aren't afraid that they overdid things when they said some 200,000-300,000 people would rally in Belgrade. They have been on the road for the last eight months constantly. The only person to undertake anything similar was Vuk Draskovic and perhaps the Socialists, but in another way when their deputies held an average of 15 speeches prior to the 1990 elections.

The Radicals held protest rallies in Kragujevac, Sabac, Cacak, Loznica, Valjevo, Borca, Pljevlja, Bijelo Polje, Berane, Novi Sad, Sremska Mitrovica, Leskovac. When Seselj was in jail last year they held around 100 gatherings at their party headquarters aimed at getting him released.

All that is more survival tactics than an angry flood. The paradox of Seselj's development lies in the fact that he spent more energy surviving than getting ahead (the Socialists took care of that). As an unprivileged destroyer of the opposition, Seselj got 96,227 votes in 1990 elections (1.9% of the turnout or 1.37% of the total registered electorate). Six months later, at early elections in a Belgrade suburb the Socialists helped him to win a seat in the Serbian parliament and he sat right in front of the TV cameras. A year later in May 1992 at federal elections the opposition did not take part in, his party won 1,168,933 votes. The Socialists' goal was to have a loyal Seselj attract the ultra-nationalist wings of the SPO and DS and they paid for that to the point of bankruptcy. The number of Socialist votes dropped from 2,230,587 (1990) to 1,685,485 (1992) and never got back to the earlier level. That practically means that Seselj got at least 700,000 of their votes for every one of his 100,000.

At early elections in December 1992, the previously united pro-regime corps definitely split into two blocks: the SPS had 1,359,086 votes and the Radicals had 1,066,000.

Seselj was created before Zhirinovski, perhaps using similar mechanisms, with the help of the military-police complex powered by national frustration. He was never as powerful as Zhirinovski in parliament, but he was more dangerous because of the destructive role he played in internal politics, because he fanned slumbering xenophobia and his active involvement in the war. His national radicalism found it very hard to become a normal thing in parliament like Le Pen in France or Fini in Italy because those movements in parliament socialize some extreme rightist behavior while rightist extremism here was systematically aimed at preventing a democratic consolidation and "democratic revolution".

The boomerang came back quickly. Six months after the December 1992 elections, Milosevic showed he intended to pull out of the Bosnia war, he unsuccessfully took Mitsotakis and Cosic to Pale, accepted the Vance-Owen plan and the Radicals stood in his way at home. Prior to 1993 elections, Seselj faced a fierce four month Socialist campaign against him; including mention of crimes and war crimes. Seselj lost 470,000 votes and the Socialists won 1,576,287, not enough to rule alone which caused a weakening of parliamentary authority and a further strengthening of presidential powers.

SRS republican and federal parliament deputies helped inadvertently by organizing permanent obstruction in parliament. The Socialists were just seemingly angry that Seselj was blocking parliament, angry that he was obstructing and insulting Milosevic and his wife, because he was the loudest and most persistent critic of Milosevic's negotiations on recognizing Bosnia, because he encouraged Karadzic and because of what he did in the Krajina.

When he changed sides, Seselj showed pretensions of becoming the most influential leader of the entire opposition, or at least the nationalists, he tried to expand coalition potentials by speaking of freedom of the media and by accusing the regime of crimes every chance he got.

The DS and DSS were lured into an alliance and the SPO was called to "abandon coalition cooperation with the Socialists, find itself among the opposition and return to the national program they advocated in 1990". Djindjic and Kostunica agreed to a "technical coalition" with Seselj and agreed to encourage Karadzic somewhat but went no further. Draskovic replied that "Seselj's people, at their rallies, call for war against the planet and the ovations heard there are ovations to projects of their own destruction" and repeated that "projects like Seselj's are projects of death and shame".

From May '93 to May '95, the Socialists did not know how to defuse the Radical bomb which they'd aimed at Draskovic and DEPOS, minorities, pacifists, liberals and pro-Western elements who the Socialists fear almost as much as Soros.

Since the summer of 1994, the authorities started a series of small trials against Seselj with the aim of portraying him as an impotent bully.

A day after Seselj's latest arrest, the Radicals held a rally in Prokuplje and said they won't reschedule the Belgrade rally which could mean that they know their nationalist gunpowder is wet (three unsuccessful rallies in May) and are hoping that the latest arrests could strengthen the protests. What some of the opposition is saying could even be true: Seselj said early in June that another arrest would be welcome.

That Radical cut in Gnjilane was not a cut and was not radical and it does not show any great anxiety within the regime. It seems more like a routine, clumsy operation and it shows the regime wanted an arrest to warn the radicals in their own ranks.