January 07, 2004
Election in Serbia
Serbia held Parliamentary elections on December 28. That was almost two weeks ago, but hey, we've been travelling and the kids were sick.
Besides, not much has happened since then. You think a Serbian government can form in just two weeks? They're just starting the negotiations.
Anyhow, it's generally agreed that the elections did not have a very good outcome. Somewhere between "disappointment" and "catastrophe" is the consensus.
I'm now going to discuss the election results in a little detail. If you want to jump overboard and start swimming for shore, now's your chance.
Okay, let's take a look at what happened. The election was for the Serbian Parliament, which contains 250 seats. Serbia has a fairly typical Central European system of government, meaning Parliament appoints the Prime Minister and his Cabinet. So any group that can get a majority in Parliament -- 126 seats -- controls the government.
Voting for Parliament is not by district like the US Congress. Instead, voters vote for parties. Each party gets seats in Parliament depending on the proportion of the vote that they received. So, if 20% of the people vote for a party, that party gets (20% x 250) = 50 seats in Parliament.
Simple enough, no? There is one minor wrinkle. To get any seats at all, a party must receive at least 5% of the vote. Otherwise, votes for that party are lost. This is to prevent every dinky little fringe party from getting into Parliament. Most countries with Parliamentary/party vote systems have similar provisions. In this election, this provision had some unforeseen consequences... but we'll get to that.
When the votes were counted, six parties had gotten over 5% of the vote. So these six parties got seats in Parliament. The winning six parties were as follows:
1) The Serbian Radical Party: 82 seats (27% of the popular vote). The Radicals are the populist ultra-nationalist party. They've been described as "neofascist", and that's a reasonable shorthand. They are the only party still committed to the idea of a "Greater Serbia" including parts of Bosnia and Croatia. Their leader, Vojislav Sheshelj, is presently in prison in the Hague, under indictment for war crimes in Bosnia.
The Radicals are really pretty odious. Back in the early '90s, Sheshelj founded a paramilitary group called the White Eagles. The Eagles were involved in all sorts of abominable activities in Bosnia. The Radicals deny any connection with them, but they are very proud to be connected with Sheshelj -- a man who liked to send his bodyguards out to beat up journalists who wrote bad things about him, and who once publicly boasted that he'd gouge Croatian eyes out with a spoon. And while the Radicals did try to soften their image a little for the election -- emphasizing their populist economic platform, and saying they'd only try to create Greater Serbia by "diplomatic means" -- they're still the party of ethnic cleansing.
The Radicals are a pariah group as far as the international community is concerned; and if they ever get into power, Serbia will probably once again become a pariah state. And the fact that the Radicals got a whopping 27% of the vote does not bode well. True, a lot of this was probably a protest vote... things have been tough in Serbia lately, especially in rust belt towns and the countryside. But when one person in four is voting for a party of malignant malcontents led by a thug, it's just not a good sign.
2) The Democratic Party of Serbia: 53 seats (18% of the vote). This is the party of Vojislav Kostunica, the man who defeated Milosevic for the Yugoslav Presidency in 2000. It's more or less a conservative center-right party, although like most Serbian parties it's more about personalities than ideology. They're nationalist, though not malevolently so, and are generally pro-market, although they think the last government screwed up the privatization process.
Kostunica himself is widely popular because he's perceived as being both fearless and honest. (I think this is a correct perception, by the way. We used to live around the corner from Kostunica, and it wasn't because we were living in a ritzy neighborhood... it was because he was living in a small three-room apartment in a modest neighborhood of Belgrade, same as he always had been.)
Unfortunately, even if Kostunica is honest and fearless, he's also pedantic, unimaginative, rather dull, a reflexive little-c conservative, and distinctly inclined to carry grudges. Also, he doesn't really want to be Prime Minister. He'd rather be Serbia's President. That is a separate office, chosen in a completely separate election. It's not to be confused with his old job as President of Yugoslavia. That position disappeared when Yugoslavia was finally, formally dissolved in March 2002, just 16 months after Kostunica beat Milosevic in the "Velvet Revolution" of 2000.
(Yes, it can be confusing. It gets worse, too.)
3) The Democratic Party: 37 seats (13% of the vote). Don't confuse the Democratic Party with the Democratic Party of Serbia -- they're quite different. (I said it would get worse.)
The Democratic Party is the party of Zoran Djindjic, who was Prime Minister for two years or so before being assassinated last March. It's basically a center-left party, pro-market and pro-privatization but vaguely hoping to keep some sort of social safety net.
Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has been heavily discredited by association with corruption, economic decline, and the failure to achieve any sort of resolution of the Kosovo situation. Me, I think they were lucky to get as many votes as they did. (That's largely because they reshuffled the leadership at the last minute and made Boris Tadic, the relatively popular Defense Minister, their chief.) They made a lot of enemies when they were in power, so a lot of people -- including Kostunica -- don't want to give them another chance, even as junior members of a coalition.
4) G17 Plus: 34 seats (12% of the vote). Isn't G17 Plus just the weirdest name for a political party? I think it sounds like some sort of shampoo. But what it is, is the party of western-educated technocrats. They're the best and the brightest, MBAs and PhDs who will lead Serbia to economic growth and EU membership. Most of their support came from urban voters and what passes for a yuppie class in Serbia.
5) Serbian Renewal Movement/New Serbia: 23 seats (8%). This is actually a Siamese twin, a coalition of two smaller parties, and I admit I have trouble keeping them straight. But if I have it right, New Serbia consists of the monarchists, while the Serbian Renewal Movement is the personal entourage of a very strange fellow named Vuk Draskovic.
About one Serb out of twenty thinks that Draskovic is a mystically inspired, incredibly charismatic visionary who will lead Serbia to renewed greatness. Most of the other 19 Serbs out of 20 think that Draskovic is a vain, self-obsessed twit. (I agree with the 19.)
6) Socialist Party of Serbia: 22 seats (7% of the vote). This is Milosevic's old party, the last remnant of Tito's Communist Party of Yugoslavia. It draws most of its support from the people most unhappy with the way things are: aging pensioners, disgruntled bureaucrats, and the unemployed. In other words, it's a pretty typical post-Communist Communist Party. The only distinctive thing about it is that, like the Radicals, it's aggressively nationalist. Oh, and it still claims Milosevic as its leader, even though he's being tried for war crimes in the Hague.
The Socialists are very friendly with the Radicals. Nobody else likes them much.
Right, still with me? Okay, take a look at those numbers again:
81... 53... 37... 34... 23... 22.
250 seats total, meaning 126 are needed to form a government.
Now, the Radicals -- with that big block of 81 seats -- are pariahs, and nobody but the Socialists will ally with them. (Although it's rumoured that Kostunica considered it.) And the Radicals plus the Socialists only have 81 + 22 = 103 seats, not enough to form a government.
But... if the Radicals and Socialists are in opposition, then it will take all of the other four parties, working together, to form a government. Leave any one group out, and you can't get a majority.
This means that, in order to form a government, the conservatives, liberals, monarchists, technocrats, and followers of Vuk "He Knows the Way!" Draskovic will have to settle their differences. And this will not be easy; nor is it likely to lead to a stable and effective government.
One of the reasons it won't be easy is that the Democratic Party of Serbia (Kostunica's party) and the Democratic Party (the late Djindjic's party) don't get along. In fact, Kostunica publicly said before the election that he wouldn't enter into a coalition with the Democrats. Supposedly this was because they were corrupt, and had bungled running the country's economy in general and privatization in particular. Many suspect that personal resentment on Kostunica's part may also have played a role, as Djindjic and the Democrats repeatedly blocked Kostunica from reaching Serbia's Presidency.
This feud runs so deep that at one point this week Kostunica actually proposed an all-party "grand coalition" government. However, while the Radicals and Socialists love this idea, the other three parties want nothing to do with it -- so it probably won't happen. Probably.
Another problem is that any government involving the New Serbia/Serbian Renewal two-headed calf will have to find a spot for Vuk Draskovic; and Vuk is a notorious prima donna.
And then, of course, any coalition running Serbia is going to inherit some spectacular problems, from Kosovo, to the Hague indictments, to the still-floundering Serbian economy. So there might be a new round of elections in a year or two, especially if the government is a fragile coalition.
There were other parties running, by the way: the Hungarian ethnic party, OTPOR (the student resistance turned political movement), Christian Democrats, you name it. But they didn't reach the magic 5% cutoff, although a couple of them came close.
What makes this unfortunate -- besides the wasted votes, of course -- is that the cutoff used to be 2%. If it had stayed at 2%, then two or three of the little parties would have gotten in. That would have been a good thing, because most of the little parties were OK; they might have been a bit odd, but they weren't about turning the clock back to Tito's time or gouging eyes in the name of Greater Serbia. But it's a moot point now. (Thanks to Dragan Antulov for pointing this out.)
If you've made it this far... well, thanks. I'll keep posting on this from time to time, as time allows.
[Note: comments to this entry were accidentally deleted in November 2005, while dealing with a particularly noxious attack of trackback spam. Sorry, Dragan.]
Posted by douglas at January 7, 2004 05:20 PM