Irag, I'll Scratch Your Back...
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Dan Ephron
Serbia
From Bad To Worse
The wonderful thing about democracy is choice. But the tragic thing about choice is that there isn't always a good list to choose from. On Dec. 28 Serbia will learn just that, when it holds its second democratic parliamentary elections since Slobodan Milosevic was toppled on Oct. 5, 2000. Despite being on trial in The Hague on 66 counts of war crimes, Slobo is set to be elected an M.P. Worse still, joining him will be three other alleged war criminals: ultranationalist Vojislav Seselj, former Yugoslav Army chief of staff Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic and, as of last week, Gen. Sreten Lukic. Thanks to Serbian law, which bans only convicted, imprisoned criminals from contesting elections, this ballot is rapidly looking like a Most Wanted list.
Amazingly, the alternative candidates aren't all that much better, prompting analysts to dub this election the battle between the aforementioned "war criminals" and the "common criminals." Leaders of more than half the other parties are suspected of corruption.
So who will win? "This time, fortunately, I am sure that [the war criminals] will not win at the polls," says Miroslav Prokopijevic, president of Belgrade's Free Market Center. The polls agree so far. But in recent months Serbia's wartime elite has been gaining popularity. The fact is, in dire economic --times, Serbs have begun to frown on corruption more than they do on battlefield atrocities, thanks largely to tales of the excesses of corrupt elected officials exposed daily by the media. Some Serbs even yearn for a return to the days of strongman Slobo. Given that few of his henchmen have ever been put on trial, and that little accountability among officials has yet to emerge in Serbia, some argue that the country never moved on in the first place. "If we had a transition by now, new jobs would be created and people would see that this country has a future," says Prokopijevic. Sadly, as these elections show, the only future Serbia seems to have right now is its past.
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