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Serbia Prepares To Finally Send Milosevic Party Packing
by James Hider
BELGRADE (AFP) - Serbs prepared Friday to go to the polls for the second time in three months, in an election which is expected to pry the fingers of former president Slobodan Milosevic from the last levers of power in the country he ran for 13 years.
The Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), which struck a fatal blow to the old regime when it toppled Milosevic in September federal elections, is expected to win a landslide 71% of the votes for the powerful Serbian assembly, the real seat of power in Yugoslavia.
According to a recent survey by the Institute of Social Sciences here, Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) will limp through Saturday's election with a mere 13% of the vote.
The survey suggested that the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) of Vojislav Seselj would pick up seven percent, while Vuk Draskovic's Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) might scrape through with five percent.
Confident of victory, the 18-party DOS has already nominated Zoran Djindjic, a key figure behind the recent power-change, to head the future government and implement widespread political, economic and social reforms.
"Our goal is to free ourselves from the remnants of the former Milosevic regime, and after the elections we will have the means to do so," Djindjic said.
Djindjic set out the main goals of his future government, which faces the tough task of winning back people's confidence in state institutions lost in the Milosevic years.
"We will have three structures in government: a regular ministerial one, an advisory one drawing on experienced experts, and an anti-corruption drive implemented through a whole series of inspection bodies," Djindjic told the NIN weekly.
"Milosevic's problem is that his system collapsed like a house of cards in front of his eyes, and now he is like a retired and naked emperor," he said.
More than 6.5 million voters will chose 250 deputies for the republic's assembly from candidates representing eight parties and coalitions. But the main contestants are the DOS and Milosevic's Socialists.
The likely humiliation awaiting Milosevic's party, which oversaw a decade of disintegration, international isolation and economic mismanagement, has been reflected in the Socialists' almost non-existent election campaign.
Zivadin Jovanovic, a high-ranking SPS official, complained to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission in Belgrade that the new administration had prevented the former authorities from campaigning.
The reformists won a watershed victory in September 24th federal elections, which were followed by a largely peaceful mass uprising when Milosevic refused to concede defeat.
But the federal presidency so symbolically won by Kostunica is a largely ceremonial post, and the DOS were keen to press home their victory by forcing old guard loyalists from the Serbian parliament, which they still dominate.
As the much larger partner of tiny Montenegro in Yugoslavia, Serbia is the real driving force in the federation.
The struggle for the Serbian parliament was largely won in weeks of behind-the-scenes political wrangling that followed the October uprising.
DOS leaders pressured the Socialists to dissolve the Serbian parliament - which had a mandate until September 2001 - and, under threats of renewed unrest, formed a power-sharing interim government ahead of the snap polls.
Hence the low-key campaigns by almost all the parties running for Saturday's polls.
"It's not apathy, it's just that people are certain DOS will win," 21-year-old Katerina Markovic, a Belgrade nursing student, said.
Polling stations are also due to open in Serbian enclaves in the U.N.-administrated province of Kosovo, the scene of current unrest by ethnic Albanian groups.
The province's majority Albanian population has boycotted every vote since Milosevic revoked Kosovo's autonomy in 1989.
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