Serbia: The Sixth Round

Serbia is running up to the finishing line of the sixth elections, even though it remains unclear what exactly will be decided upon when the ballots are cast. Serbia has made nine attempts since 1990 aimed at changing something, but everything has remained the same. Do five elections (1990, two in 1992, 1993 and 1996) and four big waves of mass protests (March 1991, Summer 1992, June 1993, Winter 1996/7) mean something other than re-runs of unsuccessful velvet revolutions?

If the first elections held in 1990 represented a kind of legalisation of the multi-party system and the launching of main actors onto the political scene, none if whom have left it since then; if the gains of the March 1991 events is the freedom of assembly; if the rump May 1991 elections led to the constitution of the new federal state and the political separation of the radicals from the corpus of the Socialist Party despite their maintaining of close links; if the St. Vitus' Day rally and the 1992 elections represented the redefinition of the national programme and the failed attempt at creating the government of national salvation by involving the intellectuals in politics; if the early 1993 elections marked a noisy separation between the Socialists and the Radicals; if the November 1996 elections gave power to the parties of the democratic centre in the bigger cities; if the citizens' rebellion in the winter of 1997 drew a red line which shows that no blatant thefts but only "allowed cheating" is tolerable - what will then the 1997 elections bring us?

The results of these elections, regardless of whether the participants like it or not, will last until the end of the millennium, even though one political group is convinced that the arrangement arrived at in this round of voting is bound to be short-lived. These elections may decide which parties will remain on the overcrowded political scene in Serbia, and, perhaps, ultimately whether someone else apart from the ruling party will actually get a chance to control the upcoming privatisation. But, the elections themselves do not indicate this since they resemble the process of elimination.

The essence of these elections boils down to a conflict between Vuk Draskovic, the leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), who is running for the Serbian presidency for the second time, and Zoran Djindjic, the President of the Democratic Party (DS), the Mayor of Belgrade who has the support of the semi-existing coalition "Zajedno" ("Together") and the informal leader of the "boycott coalition."

This is an all-out conflict. Judging by its intensity, it is not very cruel, if one dismisses one egg thrown at the beginning of the election campaign in Kraljevo and several night fights in Belgrade and Valjevo over the protection of election posters, and including the agreement between the security services of the two conflicting parties (DS and SPO), which was also done during the Cold War on the bridge Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin.

In the final analysis, that conflict must be cruel in political terms. The degree of "cruelty" will be marked by an attempted marginalisation of the opponent. It will also largely depend on whether the "boycott coalition" can constitute itself as an alternative political force.

The way things stand at the moment, Draskovic is relying on his talents as an orator and is confirming his image of a lord of city squares in Nis, Leskovac, Pirot, Bor and so on. Between ten and twenty thousand people came out in pouring rain to hear him in Kragujevac. The local independent paper reported that only 79 people attended a anti-election panel debate in the town.

The anti-election group is embarking on finishing its campaign. It is organising points in all bigger towns where party activists will distribute anti-election material and flyers with one word written on it: "Boycott!" The Electoral Commission and the Supervisory Board do not treat the anti-elections campaign as a legitimate means, which they should. The Commission and the Board have thus showed their partiality, which the parties boycotting the elections have used as a reason to launch public accusations against them. The voters and the parties do have the right to boycott the elections. But they do not have the right and are actually forbidden to obstruct the elections and prevent the voters from going to the polling booths to cast their votes.

At its inception, the anti-elections campaign was dispersed, personalised, moralistic and colourless, partly because it keeps no promise to the local activists of the possibility of participating in the division of the electoral spoils. Technically speaking, the anti-elections group can not be constituted as a unified political block, since political conflicts are more likely to take place within this group than in all previous coalitions together including the DEPOS (the Democratic Movement of Serbia), the "Together" Coalition, and the coalition formed at the very start the Joint Serbian Coalition. The differences between Slobodan Rakitic (...), Vesna Pesic (the leader of the Civic Alliance), Vojislav Kostunica, Zoran Djindjic, and Dragoljub Micunovic (the President of the Democratic Centre) seem unbridgeable. Moreover, one could expect further fragmentation of this part of the democratic centre since two more parties are entering this terrain and trying out their electoral chances - the Democratic Alternative headed by Nebojsa Covic and Social Democracy headed by General Vuk Obradovic.

There are 7.208,000 eligible voters, and for the elections to be successful at least 3.604,000 should cast their votes. A half of that number is necessary for the victory of the first candidate, which is 1.802,000 or 45,000 fewer votes than the last electoral result of the Socialists in November 1997. All the Socialists need to do is to "patch up the net" in order to make up for what they had lost in the electoral theft. Just as Draskovic did, Zoran Lilic opted for a walking campaign. His rallies have attracted fewer people than Draskovic's, but the work of the Socialists through the party network (the meetings of party activists) seems to be more intense. Draskovic needs to win two times more votes than the "Together" Coalition won last autumn.

Bearing this in mind, the autumn could be reserved, as it usually is, for the continuation of depressing talks concerning the consequences of poor tactics, who betrayed whom, and why. It is foreseeable that everything will focus on number 60 - since now the questions for a good bet are as follows: will less than 60 per cent of eligible voters cast their ballots, or will Draskovic's SPO have 60 members in the Serbian Parliament, or will Zoran Djindjic continue to be the Mayor of Belgrade 60 days after the elections, or will the democratic centre outside the Parliament comprise fewer than 60 parties after the elections?

At the last week's congress of the free cities of Serbia, Milan Bozic, the SPO representative, made a promise that this party, as the only future parliamentary party of the "Together" Coalition, will advocate the interests of the "Together" Coalition in the Serbian Parliament. Miodrag Perisic, the DS representative, appealed that what had been won ought to be preserved. This allusion to a natural alliance is music to the ears of Draskovic's former allies, since it gives hope that even in the ruined marriage of the coalition with a wrong name a piece of power in the free cities can be retained. To a certain extent, it is also a rhetoric of seduction since a number of deputies in the rural areas who belong to the parties boycotting the elections have showed an inclination to vote for Draskovic. GSS has in a way amnestied its local boards from sanctions allowing them a free assessment of the political interests in their surroundings. The statements made by a number of activists of this party in Cacak and Kragujevac indicate that they will take part in the elections. At the same time, there are rumours accompanied by suitable accusations concerning the transfer of deputies between DS and SPO.

The previous multi-party history indicates that the parties who did not participate in the elections did not manage to "stay fit." Illustrative of this are the Serbian People's Renewal (SNO) headed by Jovic and SSS headed by Babic (the electoral force of some 120,000 votes), a small parliamentary party that vanished from the political horizon in the recent elections due to poor electoral tactics and bad distribution of votes, that is now being resurrected in the coalition with Covic.

If their fate turns to be better in two or three years' time than that of the above mentioned parties, the parties boycotting the upcoming elections may consider themselves successful. At the same time, this will mean that there is still room in Serbia for the constitution of the democratic alternative which fights for the democratic principles out of the parliament. Their activity will be important, but it will nevertheless be limited by a famous question posed by Stalin, "How many divisions does that Vatican possess?"

In other words, it will be necessary for the success of the boycotting parties that their growth rates indicating political influence be higher than those announced by Milosevic in his pre-election speech this summer. For the boycott to succeed it will be necessary that 3.6 million people stay at home on election day. Their optimism rests on the assumption that the personal ratings of Zoran Djindjic have risen three times, that is that the twelve parties can gather together 15 per cent of the electorate. In the last elections, 2.8 million voters abstained, which means that another 800,000 are needed for the boycott to succeed. The best electoral results of DS, DSS and GSS put together make up the sum no greater than 700,000. The trouble is that this result, judging by the electoral results last autumn, has been reduced to some 500,000. According to the agreement on the "Together" Coalition, the parties that are now boycotting the elections received half of the mandates, whilst those side parties that joined it later are very weak anyhow. The entire coalition won only 969,198 votes last November. This means that all these parties have to surpass their earlier records which were achieved after the election campaigns that were much more forceful than the one they are currently running. According to the opinion poll carried out by the "Partner" agency, bearing in mind that the polls in the pre-election period are most often than not unreliable, 16.8 per cent of voters will not take part in the presidential elections on 21 September, whilst 17.8 percent are 'undecided'. On the other hand, the researchers of the Centre for Marketing "Markplan" from Pancevo, forecast that 58 per cent of voters will take part in the presidential elections. What is common in the findings of the two agencies, both of which failed to predict the results of the elections last time, is that they indicate that only between five and seven per cent more voters will abstain in comparison with the number of abstentions last year.

It is important to remind that the electoral law says that the parliamentary elections are declared successful regardless of how many voters have taken part in them. It will take immense pressure to force a new calling of the parliamentary elections. As far as the presidential elections are concerned, they will be repeated so long as some candidate wins a half of the electorate, that is more than a half of votes by those who have cast their ballots, on condition that more than a half of those registered on the voters' lists have taken part in the elctions. After the second round fails, the proceedings is repeated, which means that some party may change its candidate. Are any of potential presidential candidates who are currently not in the game perhaps waiting for that moment?

There is a great likelihood that an endless repetition of presidential elections might not take place since even a partial success of the boycott lowers the threshold for the strongest presidential candidate. Judging by the earlier electoral results, the strongest candidate is Zoran Lilic; yet, judging by some surveys, it is Vojislav Seselj. By making rounds of mainly smaller towns the Socialists are trying to wake up their electoral base through the network of their activists who are gathered together on a daily basis for the picture-taking for the sake of the party promotion. Vuk Draskovic, on his part, is running one of his strongest campaigns which demonstrates that he has got two goals: a small and a big one.

The group boycotting the elections will not be able to count on the SPO's mercy, its former powerful protector and the executioner of street actions. Rather, it will have to expect transfers, winning over of people, and squeezing out of the political space, in a word, all those things that can be summed up by a lapse made by Dr. Milan Bozic who said during one of the TV panel discussions on the state Radio Television Serbia, "we strangle the small." The independent media who showed understanding for the "boycott coalition" in its fight for political principles and human rights could themselves feel this on their skin. Draskovic hastened to say, using the vocabulary of his opponents, in an interview with the daily "Politika", of the very same publishing house on which he was throwing eggs last winter, that a part of the so-called independent press is "no longer independent at all" and that the observers of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe will have to pay attention to their behaviour as well, and not only to that of the state media, "especially since some of these papers are being financed from some funds for the free press."

In the above mentioned interview with "Politika", Draskovic accused all parties that decided to boycott the elections that they are conducting the anti-election campaign "exclusively against SPO" and that "this is where story begins and where it ends", and that it is the Radical and the Socialists who will benefit most from that campaign. Draskovic also stated before a rally in Leskovac attended by several thousand people that without SPO, the citizens of Serbia would have a choice in the September elections "between evil and what is worse than evil," adding that in the presidential and parliamentary elections SPO will also represent "the friends from the "Together" Coalition who are not taking part in these elections for inexplicable reasons, leaving Serbia to chose between the left coalition and that party which is leading Serbia down the hill." At the pre-election convention of SPO held in Nis, which was attended by between thirty and thirty-five thousand people, as the citizens of Nis chanted, "We want victory!", Draskovic said that those who stepped out of the "Together" Coalition could not have taken along the programme of that coalition and stressed that this programme will be implemented by SPO "after the electoral victory" and that "SPO will represent our dear friends who will not be participating in the elections together with us." The rally in Nis was finished with a display of fireworks. In all 10,570 electoral places some sort of an process of elimination will take place on 21 September.

The one waiting behind the corner, the leader of the Serbian Radicals, is running a campaign that is increasingly losing momentum and being reduced to interviews with the local media has nothing but the worst things to say about the Serbian opposition which he has been doing all these years. On 6 September, he said that the boycott of the elections in Serbia, which had been announced by some opposition parties, is a "suicidal" move, and that "that front of boycott will not even live to see the next elections", since those parties will no longer exist, adding that "four years is too long a time to survive outside the parliament" and that "Draskovic had back in 1990 lost his political compass and is driving himself to destruction by changing the political orientation day in, day out." Having won 779,126 votes in the last elections, it would suit Seselj that no one survives that eliminatory match, so that he remains alone on the scene together with the Socialists, so that they can schedule a new competition in chasing "the German spies" and those "who lined up on the lawn of the American Embassy." It is impossible to tell what way out from this confusion the Serbian voter will find on 21 September, the very same voter who has not excelled in making intelligent choices in the past.