Cheating on Everyone

The essence of the decision consists of the fact that GIK has returned 33 mandates to the coalition Zajedno which were, on the basis of the Socialist Party of Serbia's (SPS) appeals of November last year, taken away from them by the First Municipal Court in Belgrade. Therefore, the third and all other election rounds in Belgrade have been annulled, and all was returned to the state as of November 18. If all would be left at the GIK decision, Zajedno would have 60 delegates in the Assembly of Belgrade - which taken on its own is the majority of the 110 seats which the Assembly has, while ten other seats are disputable. Of those ten seats, Zajedno claims that at least another seven are theirs. The coalition Zajedno has still not received a written GIK decision, and at the Legal Council's press conference held on January 15 it was stated that the announcement of GIK president Radomir Lazarevic is legally completely unclear, since he at the same time states that the ruling of the First Municipal Court has been made invalid and has not been made invalid. The election committee cannot make court rulings invalid, but can only do so with their own decisions, so that the key legal issue on the fate of the court rulings on the annulment of the elections in Belgrade have for now remained without an answer.

The GIK decision shall come into effect if SPS does not lodge an appeal in the 48 hour-long deadline, yet at the moment when this issue of VREME goes to press, all information points to the fact that SPS shall lodge an appeal. The First Municipal Court rules on the appeal - the same one which had annulled the elections. It can (but it doesn't have to) hand down rulings with the same council members. In case that Court would rule in favor of SPS - the coalition Zajedno shall submit a claim for an emergency legal remedy to the Supreme Court of Serbia. According to the thus far experience of the coalition Zajedno, all these proceedings take around a week.

Even before GIK had announced its new-old decision, the coalition Zajedno has lodged 45 appeals at the First Municipal Court for repeating the proceedings - and that on the basis of new facts. The new facts are, according to professor Vesna Rakic-Vodinelic from the Legal Council of Zajedno as follows: first, the mayor Nebojsa Covic's statement of January 13 that the political organization Zajedno has won at the elections for City Hall; second, the statement of the Montenegrin President Momir Bulatovic that the government bodies in the country knew that the opposition had won at the elections in Belgrade and Nis; third, the report of the representative of the OSCE chairman Felipe Gonzales; fourth, the statements of the GIK members which should be interrogated as witnesses on occasion when rulings are to be handed down concerning the SPS appeals.

The First Municipal Court in Belgrade therefore needs to hand down a ruling on this appeal, as well as on an eventual SPS appeal on the newest GIK decision. Answering a question as to how could the Nis case of endless wrangling of the election committee and the court be repeated in Belgrade, professor Rakic Vodinelic said that the difference between those two cases consists in the fact that in Nis the center of illegality was in the election committee, and in Belgrade, in the courts. From a legal point of view, no one is certain how things shall unfold in Belgrade. "We don't know who shall make a move nor what type of move it shall be", says professor Dragor Hiber, head of the Legal Council of the coalition Zajedno in a statement for VREME. "SPS and the Yugoslav United Left (JUL) have a right to lodge appeals, yet rational assumptions have been hindered by panic in Belgrade SPS circles. In the coalition Zajedno there is no political optimism when word is of the stands of SPS and JUL, yet a certain legal optimism exists - since in these 60 days a number of judges have publicly stated that from now on they shall hand down rulings in accordance with the law", added Hiber.

In local circumstances the most important thing is, as always, what kind of political decision shall be adopted. A number of sources confirm that the GIK decision of December 14 on recognizing the opposition victory in Belgrade has been adopted against the consent of the top SPS officials. According to some interpretations, GIK was convened on Nebojsa Covic's initiative ; according to others, Covic does not hold such influence over GIK in order to be able to accomplish such a task. It is interesting to note that the final balance of the scales in this case was tipped by a member of the election committee from New Democracy (ND), since owing to his vote the decision of the 11-member GIK was accepted with 6:5 in favor of recognizing the results of November 17 (members of Zajedno, the Democratic Party of Serbia, ND and three judges appointed by GIK voted in favor of such a decision). When word is of the role of New Democracy in the Serbian political circumstances it may be of importance that Radomir Lazarevic, GIK president, is married to the sister of Dusan Mihajlovic, ND president. If the assumption on the key role of ND in GIK proves to be accurate, the issue still remains open as to what goals did the New Democrats have for their involvement. The most frequent assumption is that it is a government maneuver prior to the session of the OSCE Council which is to discuss the situation in Serbia on January 16 following Gonzales's report. Namely, the OSCE should be duped into thinking that their request has been met for recognizing the results of the November 17 elections, to adopt a favorable judgment on the Serbian regime, and then - as soon as the Council session is over - to hand Belgrade back to the left coalition. As we have been informed, however, the OSCE is aware of such a possibility as they are aware of the importance of Belgrade in relation to the other cities. The new OSCE chairman, the Dane Nils Peterson, has sent a fax on January 15 to the Legal Council of the coalition Zajedno in which he asks that he be informed of precise data on the current situation in all cities which Gonzales's report stated as belonging to the opposition, that is to tell them where they have and where they haven't constituted new government bodies. An answer was immediately dispatched to Peterson which states that local government has not been constituted in Belgrade, Nis, Jagodina, Smederevska Palanka, Vrsac, Zrenjanin... In the new year Peterson has also sent two fax messages to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Milan Milutinovic (the second one was sent on January 15) which clearly stated that Gonzales's report has to be respected in its entirety - therefore including the surrender of Belgrade City Hall to the opposition.