by Ivana ANOJCIC
Still, the fact remains that parties of the so-called democratic bloc together won more votes than the SRS [Serbian Radical Party]. This fact puts the Radicals' success in perspective. What makes their success even more dubious is the prediction that they will not be able to form the next government. The worst thing that can happen to a party is to win the largest number of votes in an election and then be unable to take power. What makes it even worse is that the same thing happened to the Radicals in 2003.
Still, the Radicals' first place in the elections has revived debates about the secret of their success and the dilemma as to whether this is the result of a rise in the number of hard-core nationalists in Serbia or whether most of those that chose the Radicals circled No. 4 on the ballot paper for social and economic reasons.
Zoran Stojiljkovic, professor at the Belgrade University Faculty of Political Sciences, says that the Radicals' victory comes as no surprise after their first place at the December 2003 elections: "Since then, they have been firmly ensconced in the first position, but the reason for this is not that they pick up the votes of extreme nationalists. Extreme nationalists account for 15 percent of the Radicals' supporters." Still, although it seems that the Radicals' nationalist rhetoric is the most convincing, in these elections they nevertheless came in second in Kosovo, after the DSS-NS [Democratic Party of Serbia, New Serbia] coalition, which goes to support the theory that nationalism of the authorities enjoys more support than nationalism of the opposition.
Stojiljkovic maintains that the Radicals owe much of their success to the victims of transition. People who have lost their jobs, spent their savings, can see no prospects for themselves, young people looking for their first job, or people in their fifties who have been abandoned by everybody - they all see the Radicals as their protectors. In the Radicals' promotional video, a ruddy-cheeked young man asks for the most natural of things: an education, a job. If you remember, he said, "a permanent job." Of course, everybody knows that there is no such thing as a permanent job in capitalism, but the "permanent job" concept is a communist gift that parents have passed on to their children as an eternal dream. This deliberate slip of tongue is the best illustration of the Radicals' ability to tell voters what they want and like to hear and what they can understand.
Serbia still has nearly 1 million jobless people, while about 800,000 live on the verge of subsistence. This, according to Stojiljkovic, is the key reservoir of votes for the Radicals. "Production has been restarted, but for many people, this still does not translate into an improvement in their living standards, while at the same time, job uncertainty is greater than ever," Stojiljkovic says.
A rule that was confirmed in countries that launched their transition after the fall of the Berlin Wall was that extremist parties won more votes at times of high unemployment. In other transitional countries, the emergence of losers and jobless people resulted in extreme nationalist or old communist authorities coming to power in the third, fourth, or fifth year of transition. In Serbia, that did not happen.
Dragan Djilas, who has resigned as chairman of the Belgrade City Committee of the Democratic Party (DS) because the Radicals won the largest number of votes in Belgrade, also tells Politika that "more money in voters' pockets means fewer votes for the SRS."
The Democrats, who share power in Belgrade with the DSS and G17 Plus, were the ones that insisted that the quality of life in the capital was much better than before. The question that logically follows from this is how it was possible that, despite the fact that the average wage in Belgrade is higher than in the rest of Serbia, the Radicals are the strongest party in the capital and that they have attracted another 60,000 voters since last parliamentary elections.
Djilas briefly points out that these 60,000 people are mostly refugees that live in the capital and have in the meantime been granted citizenship and the right to vote. He points out that [SRS leader in detention at the Hague tribunal] Vojislav Seselj used to donate houses to refugees in Zemun's Busija locality [Belgrade suburb], but that the city authorities - which are made up of the DS, the DSS, and G17 Plus - were the ones that gave them electricity, roads, sidewalks, and buses. "And yet the DS won 28 votes there, while the SRS won 736," Djilas says.
In his opinion, another reason why refugees that live not just in Belgrade, but all over Serbia, vote for the Radicals is that "they believe the story that, once the Radicals come to power, the Republic of Serb Krajina [in Croatia] will be restored and they will return to their pre-war homes."
According to Djilas, there is a third source of votes for the Radicals in Belgrade: "The number of SPS [Socialist Party of Serbia] supporters in Belgrade has dropped by a few percent. These are voters that, after the death of Slobodan Milosevic, saw Seselj as a new Milosevic. Also, [wealthy businessman and politician] Bogoljub Karic is no longer there, either, to attract part of the electorate away from the Radicals," Djilas says.
Since the year 2000, Stojiljkovic says, 2.5 million people have been voting for the so-called democratic option and about 1.4 million for parties of the former regime (SRS, SPS). "What is important for the rise and stability of the SRS is the fact that it is a pillar, the backbone of the parties of the former regime. There is no such a leading party in the democratic bloc to which votes would be given out of habit," Stojiljkovic says. As a result, a constant number of votes keeps being redistributed among the democratic bloc parties, which makes it seem like plowing the sands.
This is why Djilas says: "It is still too early to be talking about this, but why should not the democratic option contest the next elections in Belgrade together, why disperse the votes three ways?"
Stojiljkovic, in turn, says that the Radicals have managed to project an image of fighters against corruption. "The democratic bloc traded accusations among themselves of involvement in numerous scandals and this is one of the reasons why this bloc is being associated with corruption. Another reason is that the Radicals have not been in power for a long time. They have been out of government since 2000, while corruption is associated with government," Stojiljkovic says.
Nobody knows what has come of charges brought by [Democratic Party prime-ministerial nominee] Bozidar Djelic against the Radicals for misspending the Serbian budget, Stojiljkovic says. On the other hand, it is obvious that the story about [SRS Deputy Chairman] Tomislav Nikolic's apartments was not enough to make voters see him as a corrupt politician. Not even totally opposed statements made by Nikolic and [SRS Secretary General] Vucic about meeting with one of the richest Serbs were enough to engender widespread suspicion that the Radicals have ties to tycoons just like the leaders of other parties.
In a sentence, Zoran Stojiljkovic's analysis of the secret of the Radicals' success is as follows: They owe their success more to their adversaries and the period of transition than to their own abilities. But unless their adversaries wise up, time is not on their side. However, anybody who thinks that two years from now, the Radicals will look as they do now are naive. They have shown that they can change and adjust. After all, is it not a fact that Nikolic won more votes than Vojislav Seselj?
Statistician Miladin Kovacevic attributes the Serbian Radical Party's success in urban areas to the good campaign that the party waged, thanks to which it managed to win over voters of some other parties, mostly the Socialist Party of Serbia.
"The Radicals won about 100,000 votes more than they did in the 2003 elections. This is not a particularly dramatic change, because they had already had a following of 1 million voters. The new voters are evenly distributed in all areas. It is quite wrong to think that the social circumstances are the decisive factor that determines how people vote. That is the reason for the surprise that the Radicals won more votes in urban areas, where people live better. Surveys show, however, that the two decisive factors that determine how people vote are education and age," Kovacevic says.
According to him, the SRS's success in Belgrade should not be regarded with surprise.
"Just remember that the DS's candidate for mayor, Nenad Bogdanovic, beat the Radicals' candidate Aleksandar Vucic by a hair's breadth."
He stresses that the only thing one can say is that less-educated voters are somewhat more likely to support the Radicals. But even this is relative, because pro-Radical voters are to be found in all population brackets and this has not changed since 1992. Also, they traditionally win large numbers of votes in towns in Vojvodina, which the last elections have confirmed.
In eight municipalities in Vojvodina (Stara Pazova, Sremska Mitrovica, Titel, Srbobran, Pecinci, Indjija, Zabalj, and Backa Palanka), the SRS won more votes at the last elections than all the other parties that cleared the election threshold together. In Zabalj, the SRS won nearly 50 percent (49.51) of the votes; in Titel, 45.9 percent; and in Indjija, where people had traditionally voted Democrat since the year 2000, the Radicals won 43.15 percent of the votes.
Indjija Mayor Goran Jesic (DS) who, as the youngest mayor in then-Yugoslavia has won all elections since the year 2000 with ease, says that these results came as no surprise. "This is because the SRS was supported by the refugees, who won the right to vote after being granted citizenship. [Many Serbian refugees from other ex-Yugoslav republics settled in Vojvodina] Between the elections, about 2,000 refugees in our municipality acquired the right to vote," Jesic says, adding that "the DS, too, tripled the number of votes as compared to the 2003 elections."
According to the official electoral roll, Indjija had an electorate of 37,100 in 2003 and 39,700 in 2007.
Out of Vojvodina's 45 municipalities, including the city of Novi Sad, the G17 Plus party failed to clear the election threshold only in the small rural municipality of Mali Idjos. In this municipality, which has a predominantly ethnic Hungarian population, the SRS took first place with 20.03 percent of the votes, followed by the DS with 15.18 percent.
Original headline - "Tranzicioni profiteri"