BELGRADE, 23 December 2003 — A week before early parliamentary elections in Serbia, voters may still be deliberating but Europe and investors are not — they have decided Serbia is unable to distance itself from the legacy of Slobodan Milosevic.

“I hope that Serbia will vote for the road to Europe,” the European Union’s top diplomat, Javier Solana, said last week in Belgrade during a visit aimed at boosting the tottering democratic bloc.

His remarks came amid reports that the far-right nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS), which has generated much hatred and fear in the violent disintegration of former Yugoslavia, may emerge from the election as the strongest single party.

Solana also lambasted Serbia over the inclusion of indicted war crime suspects on their lists: “I don’t think it was a good idea. If you want to be a normal country... you have to act in line with (accepted) values and principles.”

It seems the names of suspects indicted by The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on election lists are more appealing than those who proffer the more honest prospect of more transition hardship.

A poll by the Strategic Marketing agency indicated that SRS, part of Milosevic’s regime three years ago, had the support of 25 percent of the voters two weeks before next Sunday’s election.

The SRS list is headed by Vojislav Seselj, who has been awaiting trial in detention at ICTY since last February.

Milosevic, arrested by Serbian authorities and extradited to ICTY in 2001, is leading the list of his Socialists (SPS), who are expecting around 8 percent of the votes.

Milosevic’s top general, Nebojsa Pavkovic, is running on a list of a party that splintered from SPS though he faces extradition to ICTY and a trial over his role in the brutal Kosovo war in 1999.

Now facing SRS as their No. 1 “natural enemy” are parties stemming from the once unified Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) coalition, which was at the core of the anti-Milosevic front three years ago.

The latest poll gave Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic’s Democratic Party a 12 percent support, former Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia 17, and G17 Plus 21 percent.

Presuming that they prove capable of overcoming old differences to combine for a majority, most likely with a fourth partner, they will still face issues left by Milosevic’s regime, most of which they promised to resolve ahead of the election in 2000.

But within DOS, which initially controlled 176 of the 250 seats, they have already spent too much time and energy on internal fighting and will be facing a more hostile public than before. Few of their economic reforms had a direct positive impact on daily life and far too little was done to make other crucial changes.

Whoever takes over in 2004 — radicals or their opponents — will face inefficient and allegedly corrupt justice and security systems, unresolved crimes and rampant crime and corruption.

A DOS member party, Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic’s liberals, even went for so-called patriotic votes by including a police general on their election list and “symbolically” nominating another.