It is true that the vast majority of Serbs voted for moderate, democratic parties in Sunday’s general election. Nevertheless, some 29 percent supported an ultranationalist party whose leader is on trial for war crimes in The Hague; that same party also regards Ratko Mladic, the general who ordered the Srebrenica massacre, as a hero.
The election thus gave the Serbian Radical Party the single largest bloc of support. The closest rival, the pro-European Democratic Party of President Boris Tadic gained almost 23 percent of voter support, with the Democratic Party of Serbia of outgoing Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, holding just under 17 percent and the reformist G-17 Plus party 6.8 percent.
President Tadic is unlikely to call on the ultranationalists to try and form a government. While he undoubtedly deplores their platform which calls for the incorporation of Serb areas of Bosnia and Croatia into Serbia and insists that the currently UN-governed province of Kosovo be returned to Serb rule, Tadic can, with justice, argue that there is no chance that the SRP could find any political partners with whom to form a viable coalition. Therefore protracted bargaining is expected among the other three main parties on the formation of a government. The main sticking point will be Vojislav Kostunica’s refusal to countenance a breakaway Kosovo and his insistence that Serbian war crimes suspects, including Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, surrender voluntarily. Until a Serb government agrees to arrest and send to The Hague all wanted war crimes suspects, negotiations on Serb accession to the EU will remain suspended.
Next month the UN is due to table proposals on the future of Kosovo. Publication of the plan was delayed until after the election. Whatever it proposes, they will be controversial. Reunion or total independence will stir fury on one side or the other.
Kosovo was once the heart of a powerful Serbian state until a crushing defeat by the Ottoman Turks in 1389 ushered in more than 500 years of foreign rule. Over time, largely Muslim ethnic Albanians came to outnumber the Serb population in the occupied territory so that there are now more than 5 million Albanians and only some 100,000 ethnic Serbs left.
Nothing can take away the historic and cultural significance of Kosovo for the Serbs. But time and demography have moved on. Is the ownership of what is now one of the poorest regions in Europe really worth sabotaging Serbia’s future prosperity as a member of the EU and prolonging Balkan instability? Serbs need to think again. Ultimate political union in Europe will make borders irrelevant, whether for the Basques and Spanish, the Macedonians and Greeks or the Kosovars and Serbs. Kosovo will always be part of Serbia’s past but it is unlikely to form an integral part of a prosperous and stable Serb future. It could, however, be the rock on which peace and prosperity founder, not just for Serbia but for the wider Balkans.
