January 26, 2004
Update on Serbia
The new Serbian Parliament will convene tomorrow, but the parties have still not agreed on a government. (If you haven't been following this story, you might want to go back and look at this post. It's three weeks old, but not much has changed.)
DSS, G-17 and the Serbian Renewal/New Serbia coalition are all willing to form a government, but they don't have enough votes for a majority. And the Democratic Party is now refusing to support their minority government. The Democrats have hinted that they'd change their minds if suitably compensated (i.e., with the position of Speaker of the Parliament), but the other parties are too annoyed with the Democrats to consider this.
Complicating the picture is the fact that the Democrats are undergoing a vicious internal faction fight between supporters of former PM Zivkovic and Defense Minister Tadic. The other parties would be willing to deal with Tadic, albeit at arm's length, but Zivkovic and his friends are persona non grata. This is supposedly because Zivkovic allowed corruption to flourish; in fact, I suspect it's because he's become the scapegoat for all the ills associated with the previous government. In any event, the Democrats are not speaking with one voice, which does make things that much more complicated.
The various parties have about twelve more hours to come up with a solution. If they don't, Serbia will enter upon a period of what could charitably be called political uncertainty. If they really can't agree, then new elections will have to be called at some point... but even that gets complicated, because calling new elections is really the President's job, and there is no President. And, of course, it's entirely possible that new elections would simply produce the same results all over again.
I'm not sure when was the last time a European country faced this sort of political deadlock. Is it unique? Does anyone know?
Posted by douglas at January 26, 2004 03:26 PM | TrackBack