THE BALKANS, WHICH once seemed set to plunge Europe into a wider conflict, has quite faded the headlines. We know Slobodan Milosevic is on trial in The Hague, and the rest of the world may think that the Balkans have dropped back into torpor.

This is however far from the case. Events are under way in Serbia which threaten the future of Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) coalition government of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic and perhaps more important, the position of Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica’s and his Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS).

In a bizarre development, Premier Djindjic and his DOS executive, have decided to fire fully 50 of their own coalition MPs for consistent nonattendance at the legislature. Their absence has at times held up key reform legislation because Parliament did not have a quorum. This tactic, especially on behalf of MPs from Kostunica’s own DSS party, has been quite deliberate, because the president has frequently been concerned at the social consequences of reforms being pushed through by free marketeer Djindjic.

The opposition parties are all Milosevic cronies, with whom the DSS could never join, so parliamentary boycott was the only tactic open to them.

Premier Djindjic is proposing to replace the fifty fired MPs with others from his coalition government’s list but crucially, the political mix will be different. The president’s DSS will for instance lose ten of its 23 MPs. Other parties within the DOS coalition will suffer similar cuts and one will lose its only MP.

Now this radical surgery may reflect the prime minister’s frustration at the unmanageability of his 18-party coalition, but it is a dangerous move nevertheless. The greatest weakness of Serbian politics has been its endlessly fissiparous nature.

It has been argued convincingly that the only reason the Milosevic regime survived for as long as it did, was a credible opposition, large enough and sufficiently united to challenge the dictator, could never emerge. No doubt Milosevic and his secret police helped the business along, by sowing the seeds of doubt and distrust among their political opponents.

In the end it was not the opposition politicians but the people themselves who overthrew Milosevic and the statesman-like Kostunica was raised up in his stead. Beneath him the 18-party DOS coalition contains every grouping that is not directly connected to the discredited old regime.

In any country, such an unwieldy structure would be a challenge. In Serbia, so new to the democratic process, it may yet prove unmanageable, as this crisis over the 50 fired MPs may demonstrate.

The deadly danger here is that Milosevic’s cronies, now subsumed into the political process as official opposition parties, have to do absolutely nothing except wait for power to drop back into their laps. They have no policies except the restoration of the web of crime and corruption that once enriched them. They still have supporters in the army and civil service and secret police. If Premier Djindjic’s coalition falls apart, it is hard to see how another government could be formed from the ruins. If chaos then reigned, the old guard could choose their moment to step forward, to “save” the country from ruin. The face of the Balkans could once again turn ugly and the world’s press corps will be hurrying back to their old rooms in the Belgrade Hyatt.