Serbian President’s Coalition Expected To Win Analysts Predict Milosevic Victory In Yugoslav Election

The people of Yugoslavia voted Sunday in their first election since the Dayton peace accord silenced guns in the Balkans last year. Political analysts and diplomats predicted that a coalition led by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who is widely accused of starting the wars in Bosnia and Croatia, would triumph and would extend his control over this impoverished country.

The vote marks a watershed in Milosevic’s campaign to resurrect his reputation. Pilloried as the “butcher of the Balkans” by U.S. officials in 1992, the Serbian president is now treated as a key player by the Clinton administration.

Throughout the Yugoslav electoral campaign, U.S. envoys visited state-run factories and met with high-ranking officials from Milosevic’s Serbian Socialist Party, leaving a strong impression that Washington backed the Socialists. Leaders of the powerless pro-Western opposition complained about Washington’s alleged pro-Milosevic tilt, turning it into a campaign issue.

Western diplomats say the expected victory of Milosevic’s party effectively guarantees that the two republics of Yugoslavia - Serbia, with 10 million people, and Montenegro, with 600,000 - will continue to live with economies based on moribund theories of communist state control and under regimes where dissent is not tolerated.

Sunday’s election will choose municipal officials in Serbia and Montenegro plus a Montegrin legislature and a lower house of parliament for Yugoslavia. Official results are expected late this week.

The election is considered important for Milosevic because if his coalition wins a two-thirds majority in the lower house, the Serbian president will be in a strong position to rewrite Yugoslavia’s constitution and grant more power to the central government at the expense of its two constituent republics. This would allow Milosevic to run next year for president or prime minister of Yugoslavia. Milosevic has already served two terms as president of Serbia, the constitutional limit.

Western diplomats said Milosevic already appears to have taken the first steps in shifting power from Yugoslavia’s two republics to the central government. Last week, Radmilo Bogdanovic, a Socialist official close to Milosevic, announced that bills were being prepared to transfer the responsibility for the allimportant secret service, which has operated under the Serbian government, to the central Yugoslav government.

Milosevic’s ability to ride the waves of political fortune amazes diplomats here. Under his leadership, Yugoslavia has shrunk from six republics to two. Hundreds of thousands of Serbs were expelled from their ancestral homes in Croatia and now eke out miserable existences in Serbia. Serb dreams of creating their own state in Bosnia are stillborn as well.

And per capita income in Serbia has plummeted from about $1,000 a month before the war to about $100 today.

Milosevic’s coalition dominated Yugoslavia’s airwaves. During the second week of October, TV Serbia devoted 99 minutes to Milosevic’s coalition. A coalition of four opposition parties got less than four minutes.