February 04, 2008 (the date of publication in Russian)
Alexander Rublev
BOSNYAKS AND HUNGARIANS SAVE BORIS TADIC
Secessionist minorities have determined the outcome of Serbian elections
The shift of power in Belgrade, which seemed quite possible days ago, is not going to happen. SRP leader Tomislav Nikolic, who challenged the West with the intention to establish close (special) partnership with Russia, has lost the vote to incumbent President Boris Tadic.
The outcome of the elections remained unclear until the last moment. The share of Tadic's supporters among the politically active population did not exceed 45. His team could hope only for the "twilight zone" of the population, indifferent to the orientation of the country as well as to the fate of the breakaway province of Kosovo, and focused exceptionally on the lining of their purse and refrigerator. Before the second round of elections, Tadic addressed his campaign to this very category of Serbian population.
His key term, affecting their psychology, was "isolation". For the majority of Serbs, this term implies not an abstraction but years of experience of late 1990s when the level of life was steadily declining, inflation rising, and currency devaluating.
By intimidating the traditionally passive voter with the menace of the West's probable revenge for Nikolic's victory, Tadic managed to activate all those for whom material well-being was the primary virtue in the hierarchy of personal values.
Tadic garnered most of his votes in Belgrade. The capital of Serbia (earlier – of the Yugoslavian Federation) has long transformed into a Westernized megapolis, where citizens prefer to emphasize their European identity. The city that betrayed Milosevic in year 2000 repeatedly displayed its loyalty to the same forces that launched the first East European "colored revolutions" eight years ago.
However, Tadic owes his victory not only to the cosmopolitan urban population of the capital. A significant contribution to his advantage was provided by those ethnic minorities of Serbia, which had been pursuing secession from the federal state since 1990s.
Around two thirds of citizens of Sanjak, a region in Serbia's south-east, is constituted by Moslems which have adopted the identity of Bosnyaks (Bosnians) in 2001. Their number is circa 200,000. At least 90% votes were garnered here by Tadic.
Boris Tadic, as a "pro-European" candidate, enjoyed similarly energetic support from one more ethnic minority – the 300,000 Hungarians, constituting the majority in the autonomous region of Vojvodina. The amount of over 190,000 minorities' votes has played a decisive role in his narrow advantage over Tomislav Nikolic.
Though Tadic managed to retain the presidential powers, he is hardly able to display himself as the leader of the Serbian nation and to speak on its behalf. Most of ethnic Serbs refuse to support him, and this fact should not be underestimated. More significantly, Tadic will soon have to pay for support from the Moslem communities which demand decentralization and confederalization of Serbia. This is most typical for Sanjak, where Moslem leaders urged their electorate to support Tadic, neglecting his nationalist rhetoric during the campaign.
According to srpska.ru, the Sanjak Democratic Party, chaired by Rasim Ljajic, and the List for Sanjak, headed by Sulejman Ugljanin, signed a joint address to Serbian Bosnyaks, urging the Moslem voters to support Boris Tadic. "We are convinced that the February 3 elections are prior to party interests, and that their result will determine the future of this country for the following decade", the joint statement said.
This assumption sounds doubtful. Serbia's future remains undecided. Though Nikolic, who personified the will of the Serbs for the country's territorial integrity and its right to develop differently from neighbor states with their rather decorative sovereignty, did not manage to win, his cause is not lost. Now, Tadic alone is going to bear responsibility for the possible secession of Kosovo, and therefore, to be since associated in the mind of the Serbs with the disaster ensuing from the pro-Western choice.
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