Thanks Mr. Davis on your informative article.
It seems to me,the only strategy for Tadic now is to get one or more of the minority parties on his team, and that is not going to be easy.
Adding Nikolic’s Radicals would put Tadic way, way over the top at 179 seats, but that’s a highly improbable alliance for a hundred different reasons, not the least of which is that they are at opposite ends of the political spectrum from one another.
Adding Kostunica’s thirty seats alone could also do it for Tadic (132 seats) — but even more improbable now given the state of their relationship after Tadic not only signed the SAA, but at the same time, one of Tadic’s minions publicly stabbed Kostunica in the back with an EU official.
Adding an alliance with the old Milosevic Socialists would help Tadic. (Now wouldn’t that be a real irony?) But even with the Socialists (124 total seats), Tadic would still need to pick up a minuscule leftover minority party with a few seats — who in this case are actual “minorities”, Bosniak Muslims, Presevo Albanians, Vojvodina Hungarians, etc. — to make it over the top. The real minorities love Tadic (so does Kosovo’s Hashim Thaci), so those little votes are easy, but an alliance with the Socialists would damage Tadic’s narcissistic image in the West and it would be a marriage of convenience sure to collapse at the first sign of trouble. Plus, the Socialists are unlikely to be willing to join into that little political orgy, whoever’s bed that they might otherwise be willing to get into.
In any case, Tadic has 90 days to form a new government. My bet is that if it doesn’t happen very soon, it isn’t going to happen for Tadic at all. Then one of two things will happen — either a Nikolic/Kostunica/Socialist will step in to fill the void (if they wait at all). Or it will be back to new elections and this Serbia/EU/Russia/US circus will start all over again.
Gee, aren’t we glad that “Kosovo independence” stabilized the Balkans? NOT! Kosovo has been the single biggest destabilizing factor in this Serbian political free-for-all, whether directly or indirectly, and it’s all because President Bush decided to follow Bill Clinton’s stupid political lead –right off a Balkan cliff. And we are going to be picking up the pieces of that Kosovo Independence “crash” for a long time, as far away as Tibet and “Palestine”, let alone Serbia.
Something that will not likely make an impression on the Western press is the real level of Serbian voter ambivalence in this election. Only 60% of Serbia’s eligible voters even turned out to vote at this crucial moment in Serbia’s history. Does this mean that they don’t care? Or that they can’t decide?
Well, let’s see. Pretend you are a Serbian voter and you’ve got two main choices: 1. Vote for the party that is pro-EU and promises you “a better future”, in spite of the fact that most of that EU countries supported the ripping off of 15% of your most precious territory (Kosovo), love to humiliate you every chance they get and are sending a mission to your territory without an invitation? 2. Or, vote for the party that wants to turn more toward Russia, knowing that the Russians haven’t told you what “the bill” for their support is yet, and you know that the EU & US will use you as their punching bag to an even greater extent if you vote pointing East?
So what’s your choice? Screw yourself or screw yourself?
It’s not hard to understand the Serbian feeling that there is “no right answer, the game is rigged for you to lose so you might as well not play (vote) at all”. And, every election in that last seven years for Serbia (and there have been many) has been billed by politicians & the West as as “crucial”, “make or break”, “East or West”, “EU or isolation” “life or death”. That would wear me out, too — especially when not much changes no matter who you vote for.
Although the stakes were not as high (or were they?) I can recall a similar feeling years ago, back when I couldn’t even force my hand to check the box for either “Bill Clinton” or “Bob Dole” for president — a nasty, frustrating scenario that is likely to be repeated this November, with new players but the same Catch 22 alternatives. Luckily, no one was threatening me with economic sanctions and violence as they are with Serbian voters, whatever choice I made (or were they?).
What is very certain is that the real heat on Serbia’s new government (or lack of one) is due to be turned up even higher next month:
In June, the Eulex Mission is due to be deployed to Kosovo.
In June, Kosovo’s contrived, mail-order “constitution” is due to come into effect, and the US & EU will pretend to take it seriously, even if no one else in the world does.
And, this June will be the first Serbian Vidovdan without Kosovo. Vidovdan, commemorating a time when six hundred years ago Serb Christians stood up to the Islamic invasion in spite of knowing they would lose their lives against overwhelming odds, but that generation of Serbs had the guts to do it anyway because they said to themselves, “Better a grave than a slave”. So what will this generation of Serbs and Serbians tell themselves on this Vidovdan, a date when so many significant events have taken place in Serbian history? That they are the ones who lost Kosovo, who don’t have the guts to fight for it, and who would rather be “EU slaves than graves”? Or that they are just sick of dying & killing for Western “entertainment” value.
Once again, 2008 post-election Serbia ultimately finds itself in the same predicament that Bishop Sava so eloquently described Serbia’s position in the 13th century:
“At first we were confused. The East thought that we were West while the West considered us to be East. Some of us misunderstood our place in the clash of currents so they cried that we belong to neither side and others that we belong exclusively to one side or the other. But I tell you Ireneus we are doomed by fate to be the East in the West and the West in the East, to acknowledge only heavenly Jerusalem beyond us and here on earth–no one.” —St. Sava to Irenaeus 13th Century
Must be the geography. Because few countries have been forced to fight against so many larger and more formidable powers as many times as Serbia has just for their right to exist and have a normal life — with elections and politicians that really mean so very little to the ultimate quality of their lives, no matter how hard they try to get it right.
