Slightly Askew

The September ‘97 elections are being fought at the political center and it’s not just battles but a war between the SPO leader and presidential candidate Vuk Draskovic and DS chief and informal leader of the boycott Zoran Djindjic.

While the votes were still being counted, the effect of the first results of the vote was being felt in central Belgrade where the SPO was trying to kick Djindjic out of local affairs. The political influence of Djindjic’s followers (who include intellectuals, dissidents, analysts) is being marginalized, and that has to be bad, because the political offer is being reduced in the part of politics which makes a society stable. Draskovic’s efforts to topple Djindjic will deteriorate his relations with the DS leader’s elite and will take him far away from his promise to speak for all of democratic Serbia.

Right after the elections, an effort to oust Djindjic as mayor of Belgrade was launched because, as SPO spokesman Ivan Kovacevic put it, his activities were not in the interest of the population, since he had called for the boycott.

Djindjic could have been criticized for any other little thing and the logical outcome would still be the same - the end of a political battle which might mark the end of a period of political life in Serbia during which the anti-regime public saw the opposition as a national treasure.

The many unions and divorces that the opposition went through at the political center and the search for a winning formula are signs of immaturity among the new political elite and the agony of the middle class if it still exists in post-communist society.

The idea of a large coalition in these circumstances is logical, but it might also be unpleasant to the people fighting each other. All the more or less relevant parties in Serbia, except maybe Kostunica’s DSS, had some form of cooperation with the ruling party at one time or another.

All three large parliamentary parties (the SPS, SRS and SPO) voiced readiness to talk about a coalition but made it conditional on their programs. The main line of speculation is an SPS-SPO coalition because Draskovic is much harsher in speaking about the Radicals than the Socialists. Seselj is saying we should wait for Draskovic’s anger to wear off and adding that he really has no reason to be angry because the SPO did well at the elections.

The assumption that Milosevic would prefer the pro-western monarchist Draskovic for a partner than the compromised Seselj is logical but might not be right psychologically. Milosevic’s regime likes to demonize anyone who has foreign contacts and recognizes only the president’s international activities. We saw a reflection of that in the obstruction of the import of buses for Belgrade’s city transport. Milosevic’s and Draskovic’s wives are fighting an ideological conflict, but Milosevic is no longer in Serbia but at the federal level. Since the next job is privatization which involves huge amounts of money, a very complicated agreement should not be excluded.

The SPO’s bitterness at the election failure has been dampened by the pleasure of eliminating Djindjic. Draskovic confirmed his previous election results with a lot of effort this time using his speaking abilities to gather the relatively largest crowds in the campaign.

For the first time in six years, Draskovic has been campaigning alone, fighting on four fronts; against the regime, Seselj’s Radicals, the other Zajedno coalition members and the Vojvodina coalition. He was third in the presidential race, but his result now allows him to say that he is the dominant power in the political center and his associates can say he is the hero of the elections.

Draskovic and his associates are saying that this is the best result he has achieved since 1990, better than any of the results his coalitions achieved, and in terms of numbers of votes, that is true. His personal score has always stood at about the same number of votes. The problem is that the so-called democratic center has grown smaller over the past few years. Last autumn’s first round of parliamentary elections showed that a third of the voters had disappeared from the democratic center, but that didn’t matter because the Socialists lost the local elections.

Something similar is happening in Vojvodina. Vojvodina coalition activists said in their election campaign that they are a force to be reckoned with (1.6 million voters) and that the democratic opposition in Serbia no longer exists. Their presidential candidate won 99,000 votes which is 40,000 more than their previous candidate but far below the 277,000 won by Vojvodina reformist presidential candidate Ivan Djuric in 1990. All that leaves them far from any influence.

At first glance, Djindjic’s boycott seems to have failed. One mass action was broken up by SPS followers, a student action was broken up by the police, their tribunals didn’t draw any crowds and the whole thing boiled down to a poster war. While this article is being written, Serbian election commission figures show that Belgrade’s Palilula election district had a turnout of 48.8% and was the only one (not including Kosovo) in which the number of voters was lower than abstentions. In other words, just 30,000 people boycotted the elections in Belgrade’s Palilula, Savski Venac and Stari Grad municipalities. In other places, the percentage of abstentions rose by between 5% and 8% compared to last November’s elections. That means that the achievement of the 2 boycott parties is visible only in Belgrade and Vojvodina and stands at 120,000 voters.

The republican election commission said 60.55% of the electorate turned out to vote now, compared to 60.33% last year, which means the boycott parties simply disappeared.

In their war of words, Draskovic and Djindjic are saying that Seselj would not have gone into the second round if the boycotting voters had cast ballots for Draskovic, and that Draskovic came in third because if he had joined the boycott there would have been no elections and the conditions would have improved the next time around. Both of them are right, but it’s also their fault that Seselj is looming over Serbia. Everyone worked against themselves: the boycott parties lowered Draskovic’s chances of eliminating Seselj, and the Socialists went after the political center, lowering Lilic’s chances against Seselj.

The success of the boycott and Seselj’s greatest success coincide in Vozdovac, Novi Beograd, Cukarica, Pancevo and Novi Sad. That might mean that some former Zajedno voters even voted for Seselj.

Seselj won the most seats in the Vozdovac, Novi Belgrade, Cukarica, Zrenjanin, Pancevo, Sombor, Novi Sad, Uzice, Kraljevo, Nis and Leskovac electoral districts. His success is more visible in the places where Zajedno won the local elections.

As in previous elections, the drop in Socialist votes and rise Radical votes coincide visibly.

The Socialists obviously haven’t recovered from last year’s election fiasco and their results are at least 300,000 votes lower than last November when they won 1.85 million. As this article goes to press 1,286,437 votes for the Socialists have been counted, the SPS is saying they won 1,369,040 which means Lilic won’t go over 1.5 million. The conclusion: the Socialists gave Seselj 300,000 votes, exactly what they needed to win in the first round. The Radicals stand at somewhere around 1.1 million votes, up from the 779,000 they won in 1996 and exactly where they were in 1992 when the regime favored them greatly. It’s not probable that the Socialists staged Seselj’s success, especially since the second round might not yield a president if over 50% of the electorate doesn’t turn out. The total of Socialist and Radical voters is not enough for the second round and Draskovic said after the first round that he won’t lend support to either the communist or fascist candidate. The Socialists are saying that they can get half the electorate to turn out.

The failure of the second round opens the issue of staging the elections again which means new candidacies right after the second round. Some people feel that the law is not precise in proscribing the deadline for the new round, and that could mean Serbia won’t have a new president soon.

It isn’t clear why the Socialists would want a constitutional crisis in Serbia when the political fighting is being moved to the federal level and to Montenegro. If the game with Seselj was staged to give the Socialists someone they can deal with in the second round, the game has turned against its authors.

Conspiracy theory advocates probably underestimate the Seselj phenomenon. The Socialists might like him, they might find him usable, but he is no longer under their control. As the social time bomb is ticking away, he’s gaining power in Vojvodina, in the largest towns and cities and the areas where Serbs and Moslems are mixed. That means the country’s main wheat producing area and industrial centers, areas which would have to be the champions of modernism and democracy and which are threatened by massive unemployment. Many see the success of the Radicals as a product of Seselj’s verbal aggressiveness, but that doesn’t explain why the Radicals as a party won more votes than their leader. The votes for the SRS must be votes against someone else.

Polls conducted in Vojvodina show that fear was the dominant feeling in all elections from 1990 to 1996. One analysts wrote last year that fear of civil war was combined with fear of hunger and unemployment. Seselj has deftly channeled that fear, allowing the little man to project himself onto someone who seems ruthless and supplies a simple answer to everything.

Seselj’s rise was also aided over the past six months by the Zajedno coalition’s breakup and rifts. Tactically, the regime, especially the radical leftists, raised him up in a lengthy campaign with messages of isolationism and hatred for the rest of the world. During last winter’s protests, the state media waged a propaganda campaign which could only have been good for the Radicals. That propaganda had the intensity of preparation for war, demonizing everyone who was involved in the civil protests.

The campaign portrayed the civil rebellion as a unaffordable luxury by the irresponsible elite. That had to sound good to the impoverished working class who fear that reforms, privatization and an international conspiracy and foreign capital will destroy them and their nation.

Seselj’s Radicals have not shown themselves to be dangerous to the regime to date. So far, they were the regime’s praetorian guard even when they clashed with it, although they didn’t seem organized or concentrated.

Democratic parties pointed out that the Radicals are aiding the regime, but to many people that still isn’t clear, and some Radicals might truly feel they are the opposition, Their leaders, but not their rank and file, have been used as a weapon against the opposition.

SPS spokesman Ivica Dacic seemed more confident than ever before when he said the Radicals are actually implementing the SPS program. In essence that is right. Some sociologists found a super loyalty syndrome among Radial voters.

After 1993, the Socialists managed to moderately suppress Seselj. Their obsession is that the danger to the regime is the democratic center, and they went back to him easily. Now it’s clear that they overestimated their ability to control the Radicals. Even when it was clear that Zajedno was falling apart, the Socialists didn’t change their campaign against that coalition and enjoyed Seselj’s attacks.

Seselj seemed a good thing to the Socialists after last winter’s protests, just as he did in 1992.

The consequences now are that a political force has been concentrated and it will oppose the announced changes in Serbia and its opening up to the world. As a place where the right is growing stronger again, Serbia will once again be viewed with doubts and caution and that will increase internal frustration and isolationism.

In that constellation, Draskovic will have to make compromises, keep his MPs disciplined and on a short leash, and everyone will be trying to unite against the weak in parliament.