| The winner, Boris Tadic, will have to cooperate with the Hague Tribunal The victory of Democratic Party candidate Boris Tadic in yesterday's presidential elections in Serbia coincided with a significant day for the whole of Europe - the 90th anniversary of the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Then a few bullets fired by the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip caused a chain reaction in European politics that ended in the First World War. The victory of democrat Tadic, greeted by representatives of almost all EU countries and Javier Solana himself, would be considered in the West as the final liberation of Serbia from the nationalist demon that once fanned a global fire in Europe.
Tadic advocates rapprochement between Serbia and the EU and “Euro-Atlantic integration,” in other words, joining NATO. His opponent Tomislav Nikolic, leader of the Serbian Radical Party and deputy of the main Serbian nationalist Vojislav Seselj, imprisoned in The Hague, has become a real scarecrow in Europe in recent months - almost all European media have campaigned against him. However, Tadić won by a small margin: 53% of the votes to Nikolić's 45%. And this despite the fact that only 48% of 6.53 million voters took part in the voting. In a democracy, the president cannot ignore the opinions of such a large minority. Nikolic emphasized this fact without challenging the election results: “The President of Serbia is obliged to cooperate with all citizens, and all citizens must be equal before him.”
However, for some citizens, if Tadic is serious about the country's integration into the EU, they will still have to become less equal. The head of the European Commission mission to Serbia and Montenegro, Geoffrey Baret, said immediately after the elections that the main condition for Serbia and Montenegro’s accession to the EU is cooperation with the Hague Tribunal. Meanwhile, there are still hundreds of people walking around Serbia whom the prosecutor of the international tribunal, Carla del Ponte, would like to see in The Hague.
The idea of sending heroes of the wars of the 90s to The Hague is not very popular in Serbia. “The Hague Tribunal, in fact, worked for Nikolic’s campaign,” noted our source at the Russian Foreign Ministry. Bosnia's Republika Srpska regularly receives a "cut" economic aid package from the West for failing to send its former leader Radovan Karadzic to The Hague. It is still not easy for the Serbs to realize that the path to Brussels lies through The Hague.
In addition, the Serbs are dissatisfied with their economic situation. They feel deceived by Europe, although they understand that they simply have no other way but to join the EU. On the eve of the elections, Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic noted that Serbia could not get into the “white list” of Schengen states - there is no visa-free regime with Western Europe, and when traveling, Serbs experience much greater difficulties than residents of Bulgaria and Romania, not to mention about Hungary. But under Tito, the Serbs were proud of the opportunity to travel to the West, which gave them many advantages over the aforementioned neighbors.
As president, Tadic will have to solve all these problems together with Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica. Despite the fact that it was Kostunica who formally overthrew Milosevic in October 2000, Tadic’s former boss, Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, who was killed more than a year ago, enjoyed much greater trust from the West. Nevertheless, the tandem of Tadic and Kostunica has a much greater chance of ingratiating itself with the Brussels bureaucrats than any other combination of today's Serbian politicians. And this is the most important thing for Serbia today. Dmitry BABICH, Russia Profile magazine, - for the newspaper “Vremya Novostey” |
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