Fair, democratic elections?

This is a response to Andrew Gray's article Elections are stability test for Balkans (The Jakarta Post, July 28, 2000).

If said article is meant to be analytical, then in my humble opinion it failed grossly due to the author's rubber-like treatment of facts and selective vision.

First, the author relies and relays the West's (primarily U.S. and British governments') perception of the situation and instead of giving us the real world, on-the-ground facts of the region he chose to analyze, he opted for wishful thinking and very biased fortune telling. Thus he "knows" before hand that elections in Serbia and Yugoslavia are going to be rigged before he even knew the elections were going to be staged.

He praises the decision of one party ("Serbian Renewal Movement") and Montenegrin ruling coalition to boycott the federal elections, although the majority of other opposition parties assess that this would greatly help President Milosevic in getting easy votes and at least 40 extra seats in the Federal Parliament as well as a new term in presidential office.

On the other hand, local elections are, according to the author, going to be OK, since the opposition parties are expected to consolidate their reign in all major Serbian cities. It goes without saying that, should the opposition fail to keep their grip on opposition ruled cities, that would make these elections invalid as well. So much for democracy and people's choice.

In contrast, Kosovo elections are going to be fair, free and democratic, mostly because NATO officials say so. This claim regardless of the fact that 300,000 non-Albanians have been ethnically cleansed since the arrival of UN's KFOR and UNMIK forces with no prospect of a soon return (no questions asked how and where are they going to vote); regardless of the fact that further 2,000 have been killed (so they cannot of course register to vote); regardless of the fact the remaining non-Albanian population is scared into ghettos scattered across the province by unceasable terror campaign by the Albanian majority, denied freedom of movement outside the ghettos and denied basic human rights (like the right to life itself); regardless of the fact that non-Albanian representatives will be simply appointed by the occupation force rather than elected. Despite all these facts, Kosovo elections are expected (by the author and by the NATO) to be fair and democratic etc.

But the author is not really to blame. He only reflects the prevailing atmosphere in Western mainstream journalism; if the facts are bad for the story, stick to official propaganda. And who cares about general public right to information!

BRANIMIR SALEVIC

Tangerang, West Java