»February 14, 2004
Serbia: Brief Update #2
Still no government in Serbia.
You want details? Well, Kostunica still won't accept the Democratic Party into government. He'd be willing to cut a deal with Milosevic's Socialist Party, but his coalition partners -- especially Vuk Draskovic's Serbian Renewal group -- absolutely refuse. (Since Draskovic was the object of several assassination attempts during the Milosevic years, this is understandable.)
There are rumors that some in Draskovic's party have grown impatient with this position and are willing to defy him, but those seem to be just rumors. So far.
The Democrats are still internally divided, but they all still think that the Socialists are even more unpopular than they are (probably true) so they're hoping that Kostunica will come around.
Kostunica's Speaker -- elected, you may recall, with the help of Socialist votes -- is threatening to call another round of elections. This would really complicate things, as it would probably strengthen the Radicals. (A second election so soon would mean low voter turnout, but the Radicals have been very good about getting out their vote. So they'd probably come out relatively stronger.) Nobody likes this idea, but we'll probably be hearing more about it as the days go by.
(Kostunica's party has just introduced a bill to amend the law on elections in two ways: to allow parties representing ethnic minorities to enter Parliament with just 1% of the vote instead of 5%, and to allow overseas Serbs to vote. The first provision would very probably result in a few extra votes for the "democratic bloc", as Serbia's Hungarians, at least, would likely send a few Members into Parliament.
(The second one would be trickier; it might favor Kostunica's DSS party, but might also feed votes to the Radicals and Socialists. The Serbs of the diaspora tend to be more nationalist than the Serbs in Serbia, these days.)
Meanwhile the World Bank is saying that the next round of loans is likely to be delayed or, perhaps, cancelled. Nobody seems to be paying much attention.
Off topic, but did you get my e-mail about telephone availability? My replies to you in the past have disappeared into the ether, so I wanted to make sure.