Milosevic poised to win parliamentary seat in absentia in Serb

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro -- It looks like another rough day for Serbian politics today -- four indicted war criminals are running for parliament.

The elections could result in seats for at least two of them, Slobodan Milosevic and a former associate. They won't be taking those seats, since both are in jail in The Hague, awaiting trial. But their election will deal a prestige blow to U.S. and European hopes of fostering a pro-Western democratic leadership.

Three years after Milosevic was overthrown and a decade of Balkan wars neared their end, Serbians have become disillusioned with democracy. That's evident from their failure, three times in a row, to get a big enough turnout to elect a president.

Today's election is likely to be just as inconclusive. Polls are predicting the Radical Party will win the most seats in the 250-member parliament, but not enough to form a majority coalition.

The Radical Party's lead candidate is Vojislav Seselj, a former Milosevic associate. Before he was jailed pending trial for alleged war crimes during the Balkan wars, his claims to fame included spitting at the parliament speaker and brandishing a handgun in front of the parliament building.

The Radicals are projected to win 24 percent of the vote, and the Socialists, who are running Milosevic, 8 percent. The closest pro-democracy grouping is G-17 at 21 percent.

Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic of the pro-democracy bloc expects many will vote for the extremists to show their disaffection with the West and three years of market reforms that have left them little better off than under Milosevic.

"Even Hitler came to power through democratic elections," Zivkovic said, equating the wave of anti-Western feeling with Germany's sense of betrayal after World War I.

Although average monthly salaries have tripled to the equivalent of about $300 since Milosevic fell, prices of some basics like household electricity have increased tenfold. Industrial production has dropped by 3 percent this year, and privatization of state-owned companies has helped to drive up unemployment to about 30 percent.

Fractures in the pro-democracy bloc that took over after Milosevic's fall and allegations of widespread corruption have left Serbs hugely disappointed.

The Radicals, meanwhile, have toned down their nationalist rhetoric and focused their election campaign on promising cheap bread, effective government and the revision of allegedly corrupt privatization deals.

This has spread their appeal beyond the nationalist fringe to ordinary folk like Dragan Pavlov, unemployed since the state-run bank where he worked went bankrupt amid government efforts to reform the economy.

"Month after month, year after year, it's getting only worse for me, for my family, for thousands of others," he said. "The big shots in government are getting richer and richer and telling me that things are going in the right direction -- sure, but only for them."

U.S. and European Union officials voice a preference for the pro-democracy bloc, but do so cautiously, lest their endorsement backfire in the nationalists' favor.

The Radical Party's Seselj calls America an exporter of "evil, corruption and crime," and Saddam Hussein "a victim of American hostility."

Many Serbs still harbor resentment over the NATO bombing in 1999 to force Milosevic to relinquish Kosovo province. They believe the U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Hague is just the latest in a long line of international institutions that are biased against the Serb nation.

Radical Party candidate Tomislav Nikolic, who won the most votes Nov. 16 in the last failed presidential vote, says his party wants a land that unites all Serbians -- an allusion to the ideology that fueled the bloody Serb rebellions in Croatia and Bosnia supported by Milosevic.

Zivkovic, Serbia's prime minister, blames the West for some of this hostility, suggesting that it pushed his pro-democracy coalition into making mistakes that fed disenchantment with reforms.

Political scientist Carlos Yordan, who teaches at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., says many Serbs will vote for the Radicals for the same reason that kept Milosevic in power for 10 years -- a sense of "victimization, the belief that the outside world does not understand Serbia, and a strong sense of national pride."