http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=12881
ANTIWAR (USA)
Moments of Transition
by Nebojsa Malic
May 22, 2008
Tadic's Titanic
In Serbia, the Wreck of Wishful Thinking
Nothing so destroys the delusions about democracy as the practice thereof.
Examples of this are legion; one could look at the daytime drama
presidential campaigns in the U.S., or the ethnic referenda in places like
Kenya or Bosnia-Herzegovina. The latest exhibit in the case against
democracy comes from Serbia, where general elections were held on May 11.
Even before the polls closed, the "European Serbia" coalition, led by the
Democratic Party leader and President of Serbia, Boris Tadic, was claiming a
stunning victory. Media, both in Serbia and the West, thundered about the
country's "clear European choice" and waxed poetic about Serbia's "tilt to
the West." The morning after, however, electoral math spoke differently.
In order to form a government, any party or coalition in Serbia has to have
at least 126 seats in the 250-member Skupshtina. Tadic's coalition got 103.
Even with the support of every possible ethnic minority party and the
militant Liberal Democrats, the most votes he could put together in the
parliament was 123.
On the other hand, the "patriotic bloc" that supposedly "lost" the
election - Serbian Radical Party (SRS), ex-PM Vojislav Kostunica's populist
coalition (DSS-NS) and the Socialists (SPS) - won more than enough mandates
among themselves to put together a government: 127.
As the awareness of numbers slowly crept into the post-election EUphoria in
both Serbia and the West, anger and threats replaced self-congratulatory
twaddle. U.S. and UK ambassadors, as they've grown accustomed to, lectured
the people of Serbia that democracy didn't *really* mean letting those who
won the most votes rule. Because, you see, only the Democrats had democratic
legitimacy to democratize democratically in a democracy.
And if democracy failed to bring Democrats to power, there were always other
means. Ceda Jovanovic, leader of the militantly pro-Imperial Liberal
Democrats, spoke about a "parallel government." Bozidar Djelic, Tadic's
right-hand man, claimed there would be protests in the streets - then tried
to backtrack and blame Reuters for misinterpretation.
Tadic himself threatened he would "not allow" any "tampering with the
popular will." Yet there was no disguising the fact that he found himself in
the exact same position as the Radicals have been in the past five years:
the strongest single party in the parliament, unable to actually rule.
Courting the SPS
Empire's enablers and EU's favorites thus found themselves in a quandary.
They could not go back into a government with Kostunica; they had to be
dragged into a marriage of convenience with him last year, and burned all
their bridges this spring, after sabotaging the government's policy on
Kosovo. The Radicals stand for everything they despise: tradition,
sovereignty, independence. So in desperation, they reached out to the
Socialists - the party of the late Slobodan Milosevic, whom they have
incessantly demonized for the past decade.
Suddenly, one could hear from the champions of "democratic reform" that the
Socialists weren't really all that bad, they could be a modern leftist party
if they'd only shed the 1990s baggage, and say, wouldn't they want to join
the Socialist International, of which the Democrats are a member (sort of)?
Even the Brussels commissars chimed in, saying the Socialists' support would
not be objectionable (quite a different story from four years ago).
Somehow, the Serbian voters were supposed to believe that the Radicals, who
were allied with Milosevic for a short time in the 1990s, and Kostunica -
who ran against Milosevic in 2000 and succeeded him as President after DOS
took power - somehow represented the "retrograde forces of the 1990s," while
Milosevic's actual party was a "modern, progressive" force of reform?
On the Edge
There was *some* reason to believe that Socialist leaders could be seduced
by the promises from Brussels. After all, Serbia's obsession with the EU was
manufactured from people's nostalgia for the old Socialist Yugoslavia, in
which no one had to work and everyone had everything - until the IMF loans
came due, anyway. Those in Serbia who worship the EU don't want a bigger
market for their products, or lower customs, or better standards of
governance; they want free money, pure and simple.
For a week, the Democrats seemed convinced the Socialist leaders would sell
out their voters for a chance to partake in Brussels junkets. Serbia was "on
the edge," declared political analysts, punning on the name of the
Socialists' leader, Ivica ("edge") Dacic.
Over the weekend, Dacic flew to Moscow, ostensibly to meet with a minor
Russian politician. Serbian media feverishly speculated whether he discussed
a possible deal with the Democrats with members of Milosevic's family, who
now live in Russia. Or could he have sought advice from Putin and Medvedev?
Finally, news came on Tuesday that the Socialists agreed to form a
government with the Radicals and Kostunica.
No Easy Task
Last Friday, Tadic derided the possibility of Socialists joining his
opponents, saying such a government would be a "short trip on the Titanic."
One can only assume the Democratic Party leader had in mind to be the
iceberg; the "nationalist" government may actually be the most stable
political structure in Serbia since the DOS coup in 2000.
DOS was a squabbling mess of pocket parties whose leaders all suffered from
delusions of grandeur. Subsequently, under tremendous pressure to keep the
Radicals out of power, Kostunica had to accept either allies of the
Democrats (G17-Plus, in the first mandate) or the Democrats themselves (in
the second mandate), both of whom ran their own policies and ultimately
caused the government to collapse. For the first time in almost a decade,
the government actually has a consensus on issues of vital importance to
Serbia, and doesn't contain a "Trojan" element.
On the other hand, the Empire has invested too heavily in the Democrats and
their hangers-on, as well as a host of "non-governmental" organizations, and
is likely to increase their funding now. Political pressure from Brussels
and Washington is bound to rise. So will the demonization of "nationalists"
in the Western press, already growing for the past few years. Serbian press
is by and large controlled by foreign interests, both economic and
political; it will continue to hound the government and brainwash the people
into "accepting the reality" of Imperial domination.
The Stumbling Giants
It is questionable, however, how long that domination may last. With each
passing day, oil gets more expensive (strengthening, say, Russia) and the
dollar gets weaker. The Mesopotamian expedition is bogged down, and attempts
to "win" by expanding the war to Iran may result in a Stalingrad scenario.
Empire's hegemony in the Balkans may soon be put to a test by none other
than its Albanian protégés. Elections in Macedonia are on June 1, and the
country's restless Albanians are already up in arms, again. One of their
leaders, Menduh Thaci, is a cousin of the current "president of Kosovo,"
Hashim Thaci. Another, Ali Ahmeti, was a longtime lieutenant of Avni
Klinaku, who has just established a "Movement for Unification" (of "ethnic
Albanian lands"), on May 17 in Pristina. Meanwhile, videos announcing the
formation of the "Liberation Army of Chameria" (Epirus, in western Greece)
appeared on the internet recently, following the same pattern that Thaci's
KLA used to initiate its campaign in Kosovo. It is indeed tempting to
conclude that the Greater Albanian project is about to enter its next phase.
The EU's effort to supplant the UN in the "independent state of Kosovo"
seems to have foundered as well, the Brussels bureaucrats finding that there
was more to creating reality than they initially thought.
All over the world, the idea that wishing for something could make it
reality is facing the cold, hard facts that say otherwise. The verbal
acrobatics of the Empire and its enablers in Serbia only underscore the
vacuous nature of their hegemony. President Tadic's unfortunate metaphor
about the Titanic wasn't wrong, merely misplaced. For the real monument to
arrogance proudly sailing on the irreversible course towards the End of
History now appears to be that of his masters, and his own.
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