Election days in Zagreb

With his arm hoisted high and the Croatian flag flying in the background, Mr. Tudjman with a paternal smile answers the question, "Who will you vote for", with "For the HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) Of Course!"

On a smaller poster nearby, someone had stuck a five-pointed red star on the President's shining forehead. On another poster, Dobroslav Paraga, (leader of the Croatian Party of Rights - HSP), also a presidential candidate, presented his jingles: "Entire nation to its home, UNPROFOR go home!" and "UNPROFOR for HDZ, Croatians for HSP". Another poster shows a happy family composed of members of the Party of Democratic Changes (SDP) with a conciliatory slogan - "Steady for the well-being of Croatia's people".

The atmosphere at the two election rallies in the city center proved an interesting subject of discussion. One, held by Paraga's followers, was an impressively staged reincarnation of the Nazi rallies in Berlin in the 1930s. Several hundred men in black shirts, watched by a large number of people, to the crescendo of the roll of drums, welcomed their leader with the fascist salute who solemnly approached the floodlit platform.

The other rally was held just before moratorium on the election campaign by the past, present and future President of the Republic who thanked people for turning out. Witnesses of such meetings held two years ago asserted, however, that this time the crowds were not as dense as before. Then, on the day the moratorium began, Stipe Mesic, the Chairman of the HDZ Executive Committee and the last president of former Yugoslavia, held a promotion of his book "How We Destroyed Yugoslavia". The promotion took place in the Crystal Room of Zagreb's Intercontinental Hotel in the presence of prominent members of society members and domestic and foreign journalists.

In Zagreb, buildings and monuments are carefully preserved. The monument to Ban Jelacic, in Zagreb's central square, is luxuriously illuminated by night, but streets off the city center give the impression that electricity has to be saved.

In the square of Croatia's Greats, formerly called the Square of the Victims of Fascism, the smashed tail of a Yugoslav Air Force plane downed over Djakovo in November 1991, has been put on display.

Young men and some women in uniforms are regular sights in the streets of Zagreb. They belong to "Zenga" (the Croatian Guard), HVO (the Croatian Defense Council), HV, (th e Army of Croatia), HOS (the Croatian Armed Forces) and military and civilian police forces.They carry nightsticks, pistols, very long and terrifying knives and sub-machine guns. When they arrive here on leave, most of them do not take off their uniforms. Those released from army units walk around in fatigues for weeks on end. Here too, the mental institutions have long been crowded with people from the battlefronts.

The people staring at maps of the city in which many of the streets have been renamed, look both weary and willing to belong somewhere. They are the displaced. They are all looking for some address. Some of them may not survive the next winter, as Jose Maria Mendiluca, special envoy of the UNHCR predicted. The envoy, the NOVI DANAS magazine reports, forecasts that about 500, 000 refugees will die next winter.

In Zagreb, prior to the elections, it seemed as if almost every Serbian political party, institution and political figure hasd its double here.

Looking at an election poster of Tudjman hugging smiling children, one girl says to another with a note of despair in her voice: "Are we going to have to look at his face for another five years?" And a Slovenian television program host recently voiced a similar fear when he said: "Tudjman's triumph, has postponed Milosevic's fall ."Ana Davico