Vote tests Serbs' aspirations: Europe or Russia?

BELGRADE, Serbia — A few weeks ago, members of a liberal resistance group here scattered ashes over their heads, an act of penance, they said, for electing Vojislav Kostunica, the prime minister who helped overthrow Slobodan Milosevic but who has since adopted Milosevic's harsh nationalist language.

The symbolism was clear: Kostunica, a brooding constitutional lawyer who wants Serbia to reject the West and turn east toward Russia, had forsaken the liberal aims of the October 2000 revolution. Now, they warned, as he runs for re-election, he is threatening to turn Serbia back into an economic and political pariah, a lonely nation at odds with much of the world.

Serbs will vote today in parliamentary elections that have become a tug of war between old-guard nationalism and a European future, between East and West.

"This is the most seminal election since the revolution when Milosevic was overthrown," said Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic, a member of the pro-Western Democratic Party of President Boris Tadic. "For the first time, voters face a clear-cut choice between choosing Europe or choosing isolation."

Kostunica's nationalism, like that of millions of Serbs, has been heightened by deep and genuine anger over Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia in February, with the backing of the European Union and the United States. Serbs regard Kosovo as their medieval heartland.

At a rally of several thousand people on Thursday night, Kostunica warned that allowing a Serbia shorn of Kosovo to turn toward Europe and the West would be treasonous.

All major political parties are emphatic that Kosovo should remain part of Serbia. While Tadic has used the Kosovo issue to press for closer relations with Europe and Washington, Kostunica and other nationalist-party leaders say Serbia should turn to Moscow and China.

Kosovo's minority Serb population is voting in the Sunday elections, in a move that Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership has deemed illegal. But the move has thus far not spurred widespread protests. Analysts say that the number of eligible Serb voters in Kosovo, which account for about 2 percent of total voters, is too small to significantly influence the outcome of the elections.

Kostunica's message has resonated with millions of Serbs who think they have gained little in the eight years since Milosevic was overthrown. Many people look back with nostalgia at the former Yugoslavia, where Serbs were the largest group in a sizable country that enjoyed material freedoms and open borders unknown to other communist lands.

Now, some of those former Soviet bloc countries have joined the European Union and NATO, and they are surging ahead economically. Serbia remains apart; only an elite 12 percent of Serbs hold passports, and they must seek visas for trips to Western Europe. Unemployment hovers around 21 percent, while an annual per capita gross domestic product of about $6,200 puts Serbia among Europe's paupers. Many say they feel alienated.

Liberal Serbs and Western leaders are particularly worried by the ascent of the far-right Radical Party, led by Tomislav Nikolic, who they fear could form a coalition government with Kostunica. The Radicals' incendiary founder, Vojislav Seselj, is on trial in The Hague on war-crimes charges.

According to a recent poll by Belgrade-based Strategic Marketing Agency, about 33 percent of voters support the Radicals, compared with about 32 percent for Tadic's party. Kostunica's party is in third with almost 14 percent, making the incumbent prime minister a likely kingmaker in forming a government.

"For the West, this election is a choice between bad and worse," said a senior Western diplomat, requesting anonymity because the person was not authorized to comment on the subject.

Some liberals fear a nationalist coalition government would turn Serbia into a Balkan Cuba.

"They want to bring back state socialism," said Misa Brkic, a prominent liberal economist. "They will block our joining the European Union and make Serbia a 21st-century Cuba, as Cuba was for the Russians in the 1960s in its relations with the United States."

Some moderates fear even more dire consequences if the Radicals win: a counterrevolution in which the liberal forces that overthrew Milosevic would be stamped out by nationalists, led by Seselj, who would return to Serbia from The Hague and be crowned prime minister.

"It would be Oct. 5 in reverse," said Dejan Anastasijevic, a leading commentator, referring to the day of the 2000 revolt. "People could crack heads, burn some buildings; Seselj would come to power. I am very afraid."

Leading Radical Party officials maintain that attempts to paint the party as unreconstructed, anti-Western nationalists are scare tactics.

"So many global companies have come to Serbia," said Gordana Poplazic, president of Zemun municipality, the Radicals' heartland in Belgrade. "There is no danger of isolation because nobody has an interest in doing such a thing."

The European Union, alarmed by the prospect of a Radical victory, signed a political and economic agreement with Serbia in late April that could lead to its entry into the European Union, which was meant to embolden pro-Western parties in Serbia. But the pact was immediately rebuked by hard-liners.

Some leaders in Serbia say nationalism is boiling over in part because the country has yet to reckon with its past.

Cedomir Jovanovic, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, who helped extradite Milosevic to The Hague and is one of the few voices in Serbia that supports Kosovo's independence, said no Serbian leader bothered to tell the Serbs they had lost the Balkan wars of the 1990s in which Kosovo came under international administration.

"We need to tell our people about war crimes; we need to tell our people we lost Kosovo," he added. "We need to show the world that we are not Milosevic's Serbia any more."