The spectre over Belgrade Feb 7th 2008 | BELGRADE >From The Economist print edition
The right man has won Serbia's presidency, but difficult times still lie ahead THE Belgrade stock exchange said it all. On February 4th, the day after Boris Tadic was re-elected as Serbia's president, its index reversed months of decline and shot up spectacularly. The next day, as it became clear that political turmoil was looming and the government might collapse, it shed most of its gains (admittedly, world stockmarkets also dived). More losses may follow. The election run-off was tight. Mr Tadic is a pro-Western liberal who wants his country to join the European Union as soon as it can, so as to catch up with its neighbours. Bulgaria and Romania are already members, Croatia is well advanced in talks with the EU and Macedonia may begin negotiations later this year. Mr Tadic's opponent was Tomislav Nikolic, leader of the Serbian Radical Party. Its founder and nominal leader is Vojislav Seselj, who is on trial before The Hague war-crimes tribunal. Yet Mr Nikolic won more than 47% of the vote on February 3rd, with Mr Tadic winning just over 50%. The election marked a big shift in Serbian politics. In the past support for the Radicals has been broadly steady. But by giving them a lot more votes this time, many Serbs have shown that they see the party as no longer the one of Mr Seselj and the wartime era, when it sent out murderous militias to fight for a greater Serbia. More than seven years after the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, voters were opting for change, in part because they are so angry at the way in which people with political connections have become rich. And then there is Kosovo. Nominally part of Serbia, Kosovo is preparing to declare its independence within a few weeks. Some 90% of its 2m people are ethnic Albanians who have long wanted to break the lingering bonds with Serbia. Since the war in 1999 Kosovo has come under the jurisdiction of the United Nations. A large part of the planning for the future state involves shifting the task of overseeing the province from the United Nations to the EU. On February 4th the EU said that it was ready to deploy a huge mission in Kosovo as soon as foreign ministers give the formal go-ahead, which will probably be on February 18th. The biggest loser in Serbia's presidential election was not one of the candidates but Vojislav Kostunica, the prime minister. He is in coalition with Mr Tadic's party but refused to support him for the presidency. All Serbian leaders, including Mr Tadic, oppose Kosovo's independence. But Mr Kostunica adds that, if the planned EU mission is deployed to Kosovo, Serbia should abandon its attempts to join the EU. Mr Tadic and his party say that, whatever happens over Kosovo, Serbia has no choice but to continue towards the EU. By rights, Serbia should have signed a stabilisation and association agreement with the EU by now. This is the first step on the ladder towards membership. But in late January the agreement was blocked by the Dutch foreign minister, who argued that Serbia had not done enough to pursue fugitives from The Hague tribunal (especially Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb wartime general). Instead, Serbia was offered an interim agreement amounting to little more than a statement of good intent. This deal was meant to be signed on February 7th. But it was put off after Mr Kostunica denounced it as a trap and said that Serbia would never sign. The EU reacted sharply, deploring the obstruction of “certain politicians in Belgrade”. Bitter at the way Mr Tadic won his election, Mr Kostunica wants to see the president burn, says Braca Grubacic, a political analyst. “Kostunica is trying to push Tadic to damage him,” he argues. Where does this leave the country? Mr Tadic may well buckle to the prime minister, as he has done before, despite moaning about blackmail. But the government could also break apart. That would mean either that the Radicals join a new government, which is unlikely, or that a fresh general election is held—in which Mr Kostunica, whose party is trailing in opinion polls, could be consigned to history. One possible date for an election is May 11th, when local elections are already planned. Even if the government survives this crisis, more are in the offing. Once Kosovo declares independence and the EU mission is up and running, Brussels will make good neighbourly relations a condition for Serbia's own hopes. The Serbs will not be required to recognise the new state immediately; but if they are seen to be working to undermine it at every stage, and thus jeopardising the success of the EU mission, retribution is sure to follow. The best motto for Balkan politics has always been “expect the unexpected.” Right on cue a new scenario is being mooted in Belgrade. This is that Mr Tadic and Mr Nikolic might work towards a compromise. Mr Nikolic loathes Mr Kostunica, so it was striking that after the election the two candidates spoke so respectfully about each other. A deal between them, which would stop short of a formal coalition, would give the Radicals a chance to follow the example of the ruling party in Croatia, which has graduated from hard-core nationalism to political respectability, but that would require internal purges. It could also give Mr Tadic's party the chance to sever the link between Kosovo's future and Serbia's desire to join the EU. Mr Tadic is said to favour such a compromise, which would formalise the political change that became clear in the presidential poll. The result could be a consolidation of voters behind two big parties, with just a sprinkling of others, including parties for minorities such as Hungarians and Bosniaks (Muslims) in the Sandzak region, who were key backers of Mr Tadic. If this is how things go, Mr Kostunica's days as prime minister would seem to be numbered. But he is too shrewd an operator to be counted out yet. http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10651771
