Nationalist Leads Polls Before Serbian Election

As Serbians prepare to vote for a new president on January 20, their European neighbours face the nightmare prospect of a leading candidate who wants to block the arrest of individuals wanted on war crimes charges, and even to make one suspect his prime minister.



In the last days of campaigning before the election, Serbian Radical Party candidate Tomislav Nikolic is leading in the opinion polls, ahead of the incumbent president, Boris Tadic of the Democratic Party.



While Tadic has always insisted that Serbia will cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, Nikolic has made no secret of his willingness to ignore calls for the arrest of the outstanding fugitives.



"My victory will mean that Serbia will join the defence of those who are facing the Hague tribunal,” Nikolic told a meeting in Belgrade. “Those who now fear they might be caught will have no reason to do so."



The ICTY is awaiting the handover of four fugitives by Belgrade, including the two former top Bosnian Serb figures, army commander Ratko Mladic and political leader Radovan Karadzic. Both men are charged with orchestrating the genocide in Srebrenica where 8,000 Bosniak civilians were killed by Serb forces in July 1995.



Nikolic and the Serb Radical Party, which backed the late president Slobodan Milosevic during the Yugoslav wars of the Nineties, regard the former Bosnian Serb leaders as national heroes.



Opinion is divided in Serbia over whether the ultra-nationalist could actually keep his promise to support the fugitives if he won the presidency.



Milan Antonijevic, executive director of the non-government Yugoslav Committee for Human Rights, is one observer who dreads the prospect of a Nikolic victory.



“I can’t say that cooperation with the tribunal exists now but… if he becomes Serbia’s president, cooperation with the tribunal will be stopped completely,” he told IWPR.



In his campaign programme, published in his party’s newspaper Greater Serbia, Nikolic promises to help any Serbian citizen on trial in The Hague. He has even promised to appoint Vojislav Seselj - the Serb Radical leader who is on trial there for crimes against humanity – as his prime minister.



It is not technically within the president’s jurisdiction to appoint a prime minister. That aside, political commentators say that whoever wins the election will have to comply with Serbia’s “international obligations” and will not have the power to negotiate on dealings with the tribunal.



The Serbian constitution puts foreign policy beyond the remit of the president and squarely in the hands of the government, which is appointed by parliament.



Nikolic’s remarks are therefore seen by some observers as empty promises designed to pick up votes.



“The Serbian president does not have too much authority in matters of cooperation with the tribunal. Everything is in the government’s hands,” Serbian political analyst Milan Nikolic told IWPR.



Jovan Simic, adviser to the Serbian president on cooperation with the Hague tribunal, agreed.



“If Tomislav Nikolic from the Radical Party wins – and I think he won’t – Serbia’s president doesn’t have the kind of power to change state policy. But I am afraid that Nikolic is using that political story during campaigning to get more votes,” he said.



According to the Belgrade-based Centre for Free Elections and Democracy, support for Nikolic is standing at 21 per cent, with Tadic close behind at 19 per cent. The likely outcome is that the two candidates will meet in a second-round run-off on February 3.



But whoever wins, what must worry the ICTY is that none of the nine presidential candidates has made cooperation with The Hague a priority in the election campaign.



Even President Tadic, who originally brought the issue of the indicted military leaders into the public eye, has not reiterated his insistence on cooperation with the tribunal. And with Mladic and Karadzic still at large, there are few tangible signs of cooperation between Serbia and the ICTY.



“This hesitant attitude… shows that no one has the courage to deal with this subject. This so-called cooperation with the tribunal makes Serbia look like it is not serious as a state,” said Antonijevic.



There is even a feeling that the stepping down of the tribunal’s chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte last month and the debate over Kosovo’s independence have pushed the arrest of the fugitives to the political margins.



“It [the tribunal] doesn’t seem to feature very highly unfortunately… Kosovo is on the top of their agenda. That is of much more importance for them,” said Antonia Young, a research fellow on the Balkans at the University of Bradford's Department of Peace Studies.



None of the candidates is prepared to recognise the independence of Kosovo, which has been under United Nations administration since June 1999. Albanian leaders of the breakaway region are expected to declare independence in the coming weeks.



But whatever the outcome of the elections, for many the crucial thing is for the European Union to stick to its guns and not to allow Serbia to sign a Stabilisation and Association Agreement, SAA - a first step towards full membership - until it hands over the fugitives.



“The ball is in the EU’s court, not in Serbia’s court. Even if Nikolic comes to power, the EU must insist on the rule of law, on the respect of the rules of the game that it has set itself, and not budge on them,” Dr Denisa Kostovicova, a Balkans specialist at the London School of Economics, told IWPR.



Although Tadic advocates EU membership as soon as possible and sees Kosovo as a separate issue, Nikolic and current prime minister Vojislav Kostunica do not share his view. They have both adopted a more nationalist tone and support a move towards Russia rather than Europe if the EU lends its support to Kosovo’s independence.



“What we have at the moment is a situation where both Kosovo and cooperation with The Hague are happening at the same time, which is putting the EU on the spot rather than Serbia on the spot,” said Kostovicova. “Whatever the EU does will affect what’s going to happen in relation to whether Serbia will be cooperative or not.”



Simon Jennings is an IWPR reporter in The Hague. Aleksandar Roknic is an IWPR contributor in Belgrade.