Serbia's nationalist right going stronger

LONDON: On March 24, 1998, the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) -- led by Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) President Slobodan Milosevic -- formed a coalition government with Vojislav Seselj's extreme nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS). Seselj was appointed Deputy Prime Minister in the new administration, and the SRS was given 15 of 36 cabinet posts, including the information and privatization portfolios.

The senior U.S. envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, has described Seselj -- a former paramilitary leader during the wars in Croatia (1991-1995) and Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-1995) -- as a 'fascist'. Given his record and reputation, Washington and several European embassies have said that they will not cooperate with him. Moreover, members of the SPS are divided over the new alliance, and some expect the coalition to collapse. A new round of Serbian parliamentary elections may be held by the autumn. If the polls were free and fair, and Seselj acted cleverly, then he could win the election. But Milosevic still controls the state media and he has shown in the past that he is willing to engage in electoral fraud to ensure victory.

For now, Milosevic holds the real power, and Seselj only has as much influence as the President chooses to give him. If Milosevic decides that he no longer needs Seselj -- as he has in the past -- then he will abandon him in order to forge a coalition with the head of the Serbian Renewal Movement, Vuk Drascovic. However, given the growing radicalization of political feeling in Serbia, this move could lead to mass violence among the Serbs themselves.

With Serbia's southern province of Kosovo on the verge of war, Milosevic's decision to give Seselj a share of power for the first time comes at a crucial moment. His appointment as Deputy Prime Minister confirms a trend that has been described as 'the radicalization of Serbian society'. The growing popularity of the nationalist right has been fueled by:

* increasing levels of poverty; and

* widespread resentment about territorial losses in Bosnia and Croatia.

* Serbia's economic and social problems have allowed Seselj to recruit like-minded supporters. In 1990, before the former Yugoslavia collapsed, the average wage was equivalent to 577 German marks (U.S.$313). This figure has now fallen to less than 200 marks ($110), and unemployment has risen to over 30 percent. In addition, prolonged U.S. and European sanctions have hardened anti-Western sentiment among Serbs.

The SRS has designed an economic program that is intended to appeal to the masses. Populist measures include:

* returning all property confiscated by the former communist regime, including lands owned by the church and the former monarchy; and

* restoring civilian access to foreign currency bank accounts frozen by the state in the early 1990s.

In 1991 and 1992, the SRS was effectively the nationalist vanguard of the SPS. The Radicals organized paramilitary units to conduct 'ethnic cleansing' operations in Bosnia and Croatia. However, when Milosevic realized in late 1993 that he was not going to win these conflicts, he decided to broker peace deals and cut his ties with the SRS. Seselj was briefly vilified in the official media as a war criminal.

Milosevic has now come full circle, re-embracing Seselj and his ultranationalist policies. By doing so, observers believe that the regime is creating the conditions that will transform Seselj into the country's most influential politician by 2000. In the September 1997 parliamentary polls, the SRS won 82 seats in the Serbian parliament -- more than double the number it had before -- depriving the old Socialist-led coalition of its majority. And in Serbia's December 1997 presidential election, Milosevic's proxy, Milan Milutinovic, only just defeated Seselj after four rounds of polling and substantial vote-rigging by the SPS.

Seselj is a blatant chauvinist, projecting a vision of national strength and importance based on xenophobia, racism and isolation. His party's objective is to create a Greater Serbia encompassing all of the land lost during the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. The FRY -- comprising Serbia and Montenegro -- would become a unitary state in which Montenegro would lose its status as a federal republic.

Seselj emphasized in September 1997 that if the SRS ever gained a parliamentary majority then constitutional changes would be introduced to prevent parts of the FRY demanding territorial autonomy. He claims that the creation of a Greater Serbia will not occur through conflict, but with the help of Russia after it completes its economic and political transition and re-emerges as a dominant force in Europe.

To resolve the crisis in Kosovo, the SRS advocates suppressing Albanian separatists by any means possible. It supports the expulsion of what it estimates to be 360,000 Albanian immigrants in the province, as well as the introduction of a military administration in Pristina. The SRS has recommended setting up a 20-50 kilometer-wide zone along Serbia's border with Albania, from which all ethnic Albanians would have to leave in return for 'fair financial compensation'. Salaries would be doubled for Serbs working in Kosovo, and tens of thousands of soldiers, police officers, civil servants and their families would be resettled in the province.

The SRS issued a number of proposals in October 1995 to resolve the issue, including:

* allowing state security agents to infiltrate and eventually organize ethnic Albanian groups;

* creating artificial market shortages to increase suffering and uncertainty; and

* cutting off electricity and water supplies.

Furthermore, Albanians returning from abroad would be checked for the acquired immune deficiency virus (AIDS). If tested positive, they would have to be quarantined. The media would be encouraged to portray Albania as a 'contaminated nation'.

Since joining the government, Seselj has moderated his rhetoric on Kosovo to broaden his appeal among the electorate and to maintain the coalition's united front on the issue. However, there is no reason to believe that the SRS has changed its basic character or strategy.

An opinion poll conducted just before the 1993 elections revealed that voters with minimal education tended to support the SPS, while Serbia's elite backed the SRS. Over the past five years, however, the Radicals have succeeded in broadening their appeal.

Although the December 1995 General Framework Agreement on Peace for Bosnia and Herzegovina put an end to the idea of a Greater Serbia, it did not eradicate the thinking that brought the concept into existence. The militant nationalist movement has spent the past two years reorganizing its structures, while its ethnic beliefs have spread throughout Serbian society. The nationalist media, for instance, has heightened xenophobic sentiment by emphasizing that a declining birth rate has resulted in Serbs now making up just 62 percent of the country's total population. To tackle this issue, Seselj wants the government to give Serb women financial incentives to produce more children.

Sixty prominent intellectuals (at least 16 of them from the Serbian Academy of Science and Art) signed a declaration in 1997 -- blessed by the Orthodox Patriarch Pavle -- demanding that all war crime charges be dropped against Radovan Karadzic, the former leader of the Bosnian Serbs. A September 1997 opinion poll of 400 Serbs of higher than average education found that 41.8 percent believed that the Kosovo problem should be resolved by deporting all Albanians.

As a result of the Serbs' collective reluctance to admit defeat in Bosnia and Croatia, and to acknowledge the atrocities perpetrated during these conflicts, Seselj has not had to conceal his war record. Instead, he has promoted himself as the only prominent politician in Serbia who has not betrayed his principles. As Mayor of Zemun (a Belgrade suburb) in 1996-1998, Seselj used his powers to evict Croats from municipal properties.

Since coming to power in the late 1980s, Milosevic has never had a long-term strategy. He initially promoted economic reform and parliamentary democracy, then supported the nationalist concept of a Greater Serbia, before adopting a more pragmatic policy approach in 1993. The main issues now confronting Milosevic are how to avert an economic collapse, and how to deal with his rivals in Kosovo and Montenegro.

Economic reform will have painful ramifications for an already impoverished electorate, and a compromise to end the Kosovo crisis will be severely criticized by nationalists. Milosevic may thus have calculated that it is better to have Seselj inside the government, than have him promoting nationalist discontent outside.

Montenegro is to hold parliamentary elections on May 31, 1998. If President Milo Djukanovic's Democratic Socialist Party does well in the polls, then Milosevic will not be able to strengthen his constitutional powers. The Montenegrin parliament appoints 20 of the 40 deputies to the Federal Assembly's upper chamber. Consequently, Milosevic may use Seselj in his propaganda campaign against Djukanovic, which has already portrayed the Montenegrin president as pro-Western and pro-Albanian.

The main problem for Milosevic is whether he can continue to dominate Seselj, or whether the Deputy Prime Minister will increase his own influence. For the moment, Seselj does not control the significant instruments of power, including, most importantly, the police. But the Deputy Prime Minister is an astute politician, and he will probably act in an extremely statesmanlike way in the short term while he seeks to increase his own popularity.

Given the deteriorating standard of living, and the possibility of high inflation following the 45 percent devaluation of the dinar in April, it is likely that there will be increased civil unrest in Serbia. A number of political assassinations occurred in 1997, including those of Deputy Interior Minister Radovan Stojicic, and Zoran Todorovic, a senior Yugoslav United Left official, in April and October respectively.

If Seselj ultimately goes into opposition again and challenges Milosevic, the ensuing power struggle could lead to the violent disintegration of the FRY. With no viable opposition party occupying the middle ground, the conflict would expose -- with extremely dangerous consequences -- the political divisions between communist partisans and nationalist chetniks dating back to the bloody intra-Serb fighting of World War II.

Window A: Seselj is a blatant chauvinist, projecting a vision of national strength and importance based on xenophobia, racism and isolation.

Window B: Economic reform will have painful ramifications for an already impoverished electorate, and a compromise to end the Kosovo crisis will be severely criticized by nationalists.