The Demon In the Box

At these elections, we will be voting for traitors, spies, thieves and liars. I know there are those who will believe that at least we enriched the international democratic experience with this type of election rhetoric, which in these times of privation could be taken as a reason for praise and pride.

Unfortunately, as always, this pride would rest on self-opinionated ignorance. A whole repertoire of local election adjectives have been in circulation for a long time, everywhere where voting has been accepted as a good substitute for revolution. The only difference is that in more peaceful times, in countries with stable institutions and independent media, candidates are not allowed to accuse each other of just anything and suffer no consequences. I was in America when Bush's team tried, by our standards discreetly, to question the patriotism of Bill Clinton, and was ridiculed by the press and television.

Here, however, for the first time we are in a position to change a regime by voting, and it is no wonder that the very thought is painful and irritating, especially to those who must be changed. For Milosevic, Seselj, and the Socialists, December 20th is something like Judgment Day, the end of the world which they will survive only if they manage to convince the voters that it will be the end of the world for them as well. That is why the regime's propaganda has turned into crazed intimidation, with the underlying message: if we go, you're doomed.

No matter what the outcome of the elections will be, people will need time to pull themselves together and forget all they've heard in the past few days; since this is the first time they've been surrounded and overwhelmed by so many traitors who look so harmless and well-intentioned. One of the main SPS election slogans says that Serbia is not for sale. The impoverished voter is being convinced that he should be happy if he's not made a slave, as there are all these buyers on the side just waiting to make their bids, hoping for the victory of the opposition and Milan Panic.

However, as there is suspicion in the Socialists' ranks that there are quite a few people who are not so keen to uphold the glorious traditions of the past and who would exchange their noble poverty for foreign currency, they are being offered other horror scenarios. Serbian enemies, i.e. the Croat, Moslem and Albanian allies, have got together and taken over the whole planet with the single aim of first preventing the unification of Serbs and then dismembering Serbia. Every voter should be able to feel the primeval fear of dismemberment when confronted by the cold horror of the voting box. It is expected that people will imagine how some foreign degenerate will pull them to pieces. The picture of the world and premonitions of future cataclysms would look like dissolute surrealistic fantasies if they weren't a part of folk sorcery and superstition. The motive of treason is well known in Serbian history, which is sometimes difficult to distinguish from mythology, and for the needs of this election campaign and this regime, history has completely succumbed to mythology. Myths should be able to make easy work of figures showing salaries, pensions, rates of inflation and unemployment. These, therefore, are not elections, but a battle between heaven and earth, and treason will be easily recognized by its use of earthly words, which promise life's pleasures and joys, like the snake which brought about our eternal banishment from paradise.

But biblical themes are maybe too abstract for local political marketing, and treason has been worn out by frequent use in the last few years so that various lesser, local vampires, monsters, werewolves and dragons have collected at the voting box where they lie in wait for the voter when he is alone. It should be shown that our ordinary man doesn't like to decide on his own because it is just as dangerous as walking in a graveyard at night. We only exist as a whole, as a nation, and we are wise only when we get together. When we're alone, we don't know what to think. Thus, elections like these are strange to the Serbian being.

All these local demons are in the service of one enormous evil spirit called the New World Order, which is obsessed by Serbs and which has concocted against them a punishment from hell called sanctions. Many of the passionate TV viewers here certainly don't sleep peacefully in this pre-election period, dreaming of how the New World Order will strangle them by the throat and threaten everything with sanctions. It will be no wonder if soon they start selling medicinal herbs at village fairs to ease the pains of sanctions, or maybe they already know that a wreath of garlic is enough.

It is from here that the much sought-after identity of the Serbian people started to appear slowly. The Serbs are a people who can withstand the New World Order and against whom sanctions can do nothing. The rest of the world has already surrendered and given in. Here the last candle burns and if we now choose Panic, he will open the door to all the evil forces. It is obvious that an important part of Milosevic's election strategy consists of abolishing all logic so that it can be heard that Panic came here to enforce the sanctions. Therefore, if he doesn't win, the sanctions will fail.

Another spicy detail are the various forms of false opposition which serve to add to the confusion. Seselj has already done all he could and now a crowd of others are appearing, e.g. MP Paroski, who discovered that Panic is actually a reserve candidate for SPS. The voters need to lose all sense of orientation, to stop believing their eyes and ears, to realize that politics is the entertainment of the mad and confused and, of course, vote for Milosevic. Simply because "that's the way we have it".

This time there are numberless sensible reasons to vote against and only one, partially rational, to vote for - and that is fear. By his visit to the generals, Dobrica Cosic has done something to remove the rational core of this fear and show everyone that the army won't defend Milosevic at all costs, although it didn't look as if the generals were exactly eating out of his hand. But this is about all that can be done for a systematically demoralised people who have begun to believe in magic. Because of this, these elections will, above all, be a choice between superstition and common sense.

If Milosevic and his crowd win, the world will be left with nothing else but to learn and accept the truth about Serbia, which is that this is a country out of its mind which should be left alone for a while to pull itself together. Except, of course, if the superstition here proves to be infectious and threatens to spread like leprosy, attacking everything that is new and everything that is order. But this would be the beginning of another history about which we still know nothing.

If Milosevic loses, everyone who went to vote, voted against him and returned home in one piece will begin to believe in miracles, in good fairies and angels. And those who vote for him won't admit it and in time will come to believe that they were always against him. People never seem so united and at one as at the moment they get rid of tyranny.