It looks like another rough day for Serbian politics today -- four indicted war criminals are running for parliament.
The elections could result in seats for at least two of them, Slobodan Milosevic and a former associate. They won't be taking those seats, since both are in jail in The Hague, awaiting or undergoing trial. But their election will deal a prestige blow to European and US hopes of fostering a pro-Western democratic leadership.
Three years after Milosevic was overthrown and a decade of Balkan wars neared their end, Serbians have become disillusioned with democracy. That's evident from their failure, three times in a row, to get a big enough turnout to elect a president.
PHOTO: AFP
Today's election is likely to be just as inconclusive. Polls are predicting the Radical Party will win the most seats in the 250-member parliament, but not enough to form a majority coalition.
The Radical Party's lead candidate is Vojislav Seselj, a former Milosevic associate. Before he was jailed pending trial for alleged war crimes during the Balkan wars, his claims to fame included spitting at the parliament speaker and brandishing a handgun in front of the parliament building.
The Radicals are projected to win 24 percent of the vote, and the Socialists, who are running Milosevic, 8 percent. The closest pro-democracy grouping is G-17 at 21 percent.
The poll published Monday of 1,500 people by the Strategic Marketing agency did not state a margin of error.
Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic of the pro-democracy bloc expects many will vote for the extremists to show their disaffection with the West and three years of market reforms that have left them little better off than under Milosevic.
"Even Hitler came to power through democratic elections," Zivkovic told The Associated Press, equating the wave of anti-Western feeling with Germany's sense of betrayal after World War I.
Although average monthly salaries have tripled to the equivalent of about US$300 since Milosevic fell, prices of some basics like household electricity have increased tenfold. Industrial production has dropped by 3 percent this year, and privatization of state-owned companies has helped to drive up unemployment to about 30 percent.
Fractures in the pro-democracy bloc that took over after Milosevic's fall and allegations of widespread corruption have left Serbs hugely disappointed.
The Radicals, meanwhile, have toned down their nationalist rhetoric and focused their election campaign on promising cheap bread, effective government and the revision of allegedly corrupt privatization deals.
This has spread their appeal beyond the nationalist fringe to ordinary folk like Dragan Pavlov, unemployed since the state-run bank where he worked went bankrupt amid government efforts to reform the economy.
"Month after month, year after year, it's getting only worse for me, for my family, for thousands of others," he said. "The big shots in government are getting richer and richer and telling me that things are going in the right direction -- sure, but only for them."
European Union and U.S. officials voice a preference for the pro-democracy bloc, but do so cautiously, lest their endorsement backfire in the nationalists' favor.
Many Serbs still harbor resentment over the NATO bombing in 1999 to force Milosevic to relinquish Kosovo province. They believe the U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Hague is just the latest in a long line of international institutions that are biased against the Serb nation.
Radical Party candidate Tomislav Nikolic, who won the most votes Nov. 16 in the last failed presidential vote, says his party wants a land that unites all Serbians -- an allusion to the ideology that fueled the bloody Serb rebellions in Croatia and Bosnia supported by Milosevic.
Zivkovic blames the West for some of this hostility, suggesting that it pushed his pro-democracy coalition into making mistakes that fed disenchantment with reforms.
Political scientist Carlos Yordan says many Serbs will vote for the Radicals for the same reason that kept Milosevic in power for 10 years -- a sense of "victimization, the belief that the outside world does not understand Serbia, and a strong sense of national pride."
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS