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NEWS & LETTERS, January-February 2004Our Life and Times by Kevin A. BarrySerbian electionsA rare NATO attempt to capture Radovan Karadzic in early January came up short once again, after troops searched Pale in the Bosnian Serb entity. Karadzic, along with General Ratko Mladic, was responsible for the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995. The biggest Serbian war criminal, Slobodan Milosevic, instigator of genocidal wars that claimed 200,000 lives, is now on trial at The Hague. At home, Serbian neo-fascists placed Milosevic and another war criminal, Vojislav Seselj, on the ballot in the December parliamentary elections. They did even better than expected, with Seselj’s Radical Party topping the vote with 27.5%. Milosevic’s party did not do as well, but he too won a seat. Fortunately, however, the only seat those two will actually occupy in the near future is either in a jail cell or a courtroom at The Hague. The democratic movement that ousted Milosevic in 2000 had some deep contradictions even then, with its more nationalist elements in open denial of Serbian war crimes in Bosnia and Kosova. Once in power, its "free market” economic policies did nothing to alleviate mass unemployment and poverty, while continuing corruption at the top also disillusioned supporters. The carefully planned assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic last April, which eliminated the least nationalist of the major politicians, played no small role in creating an opening for Milosevic and his ilk. |
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