Campaign on Wheels

As the September elections draw close, nervousness is more pronounced and evident amongst the political actors. Just as it is amongst the representatives of the international community, who were almost convinced that victory was in the hands of the Solidarity Coalition. Public polls from week to week show that the popularity of the threesome Plavsic, Radisic, Dodik is seriously falling. However, what has somewhat surprised the public are the newest speculations which, when one delves deeper into them, actually could prove to be realistic after all. The very leader of the Serbian Republic’s Radicals, Nikola Poplasen, recently stated that, at the time when the government is to be formed, following the elections, his party finds coalition acceptable with all the other patriotic parties. According to Poplasen, the only ones who are excluded are the representatives of the Coalition for a united Bosnia and Herzgovina, i.e. from another BH entity party. If one also takes into account the abrupt turnabout of the until recently social-democratic parties to national ones, this present election speculation is being seriously reviewed by many. An assessment one often comes upon is that the main role in the possible social-socialdemocratic-radical-national (Biljana Plavsic) government could be played by Zivko Radisic, who for many still stands as Slobodan Milosevic’s representative in the Serbian Republic. So that many are now playing with the cards which Slobodan Milosevic had already tested. For others, word is of Nikola Poplasen’s brilliant tactics. Many believe that he is playing on stressing his connections with the candidates, for whom votes are given on the BH level, in order to destabilize the affinity of the non-national body towards them.

In the meantime, the roads of the Serbian Republic are on fire from the numerous trips of the leading political figures, who are striving to reach every god forsaken village.
Numerous panel discussions mostly remain, at least as far as Banjaluka is concerned, unattended. The butt of all jokes was the hugely advertised panel discussion of Plavsic’s Serbian National Union, at the small stadium of Banjaluka’s Borac FC.  Despite the “procured and imported folk stars, opera divas and actresses”, the panel was postponed for hours - until a meager 150 visitors gathered.

Momcilo Krajisnik complained to the director of the OSCE mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Vladimir Kuznjecev,  that an “incorrect campaign was being waged in the media of the BiH Federation against the Serbian Democratic Party and himself as SDS’s candidate for member of the Presidency of BiH”.

Not trying to justify any party, what one does hear more and more often is that in reality the line which divides these parties is extremely thin, and that methodologically there is no great difference between the rivals. And many have already started to feel sorry for the poor voters who stand in front of a large choice - to choose the lesser evil between plague and cholera in September.