Election blahs
Apathetic and disillusioned, Serbian voters failed to show up at the polls for the third time running. Adisa Busuladzic reports from Belgrade
The Serbs always do things their own way. For the third time in less than three months, they have failed to elect a new president, thus thrusting this Yugoslav republic into a never-ending election day nightmare.
The 8 December presidential elections were declared invalid because the voters' turnout was lower than the required 50 per cent. The same scenario was played out on two previous election days --13 October and 29 September of this year.
Last Tuesday, the Serbian Election Commission released official results of the failed vote, saying the turnout was only 45 per cent of the 6.5 million eligible voters. Those who did vote had to chose between three nationalists who only slightly differ in their nationalist, anti-Western and anti-European positions. Moderate nationalist Vojislav Kostunica won 58 per cent of the votes, while ultra-nationalist Vojislav Seselj won 36 per cent. The third, least known candidate, Borislav Pelevic, also an extremist, captured four per cent of the vote.
The latest failure of Serbia to elect its leader signals deep fatigue and apathy among the majority of the Serbian electorate, overwhelmed by the events of the turbulent Milosevic era (1987 -- 2000) followed by two years of constant bickering and power struggles among the key leaders of the Democratic opposition of Serbia (DOS).
DOS leaders toppled Milosevic in a popular uprising in October 2000, following rigged elections for a new Yugoslav president. Two opposition figures, Vojislav Kostunica and Zoran Djindjic then rose to power, the former assuming the post of the new Yugoslav president, while the latter became prime minister. Political life in Serbia has revolved around a bitter power struggle between these two charismatic politicians ever since.
Kostunica portrayed himself as a stubborn nationalist, willing to defy the West and repeatedly refusing to arrest and hand over war criminals sought by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague. Djindjic, on the other hand, proved his readiness to trade Milosevic and other war criminals in exchange for substantial Western donations and other political gains. Since his current post will cease to exist once the Yugoslav Federation is dismantled into a loose union of Serbia and Montenegro -- as envisioned in the EU- backed constitutional changes that are scheduled to take place at the beginning of next year -- Kostunica was in a hurry to cash in on his popularity before losing the title of Yugoslav president.
Now that his hopes were dashed three times in a row by low voter turnout, he accused his political rival, Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, of election fraud. In a comment published in the Belgrade- based Vecernje Novosti daily last Friday, Kostunica said irregularities at the polls turned last weekend's failed presidential election into a "farce". Nevertheless, he vowed not to give up.
Kostunica's supporters within his Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) already announced they would file another complaint to the Serbian Supreme Court to challenge the results of the failed 8 December elections, after Serbia's Supreme Court dismissed their first claim last Wednesday. Kostunica seeks to prove that Djindjic's government had added non-existent people to the voters' lists, that Serbia's voters' lists include "voters with no name or surname, and people born two centuries ago". His party allegedly found 835,000 such irregularities on the lists.
The Serbian Orthodox Church, a sympathiser of Kostunica's nationalist policies, supported these accusations in a statement published by the Politika daily last Friday. The church alleged that several of its priests, who had died or moved out of Serbia years ago, surprisingly received voting documents in the mail ahead of the last election round.
Meanwhile, Serbian Parliament speaker, Natasa Micic, confirmed that the law requires that she schedules new elections by 8 February, 2003. After the elections are scheduled, 30 days remain for campaigning. Until the elections, Micic will be acting president.
Since the mandate of Serbian president, Milan Milutinovic (a Milosevic crony, indicted by the Hague tribunal for crimes against Albanian civilians in Kosovo), expires on 5 January, this attractive 37-year- old lawyer from the Serbian hinterlands -- nicknamed the Serbian Nicole Kidman -- will become the country's top executive for the next two months.
With pro-Western and telegenic Djindjic running the government, and young liberal Micic in the presidential seat, Serbia is set to get its most pro-Western and democratic leadership in recent history -- albeit by default and against a quasi terminal case of voter apathy.
