Crafty Milosevic Stymies Opposition
Whipsawed by legalistic maneuvers, beaten by police and aware their numbers have declined, Serbian anti-government demonstrators who captured the world’s imagination more than two months ago appear to be losing ground against President Slobodan Milosevic.
Despite isolated victories - the opposition assumed control of Serbia’s second-largest city last week, for example - leaders of the movement are clearly at a loss over ways to adjust their strategy, regain momentum and stiffen their challenge to the crafty Serbian strongman.
Debate within the opposition Zajedno (“Together”) coalition over what to do next has failed to produce answers. It was Milosevic’s decision to annul Zajedno’s Nov. 17 victories in municipal elections in 14 cities and towns that triggered an unprecedented national wave of protest now in its 11th week.
Milosevic has granted piecemeal concessions while sowing the kind of confusion that he has used in the past to stymie opponents.
One day a court will rule in favor of an opposition victory in one town; a few days later another court will cancel the decision. Or, as in the case of the central city of Kragujevac last week, Milosevic allowed Zajedno candidates to occupy the City Hall posts they won - then refused to cede control of the city-run television and radio stations. No one is suggesting that Zajedno is about to call it quits. Even if the disparate coalition were to suspend its demonstrations now, the legacy of its protest, in which university students have played a crucial, invigorating role, is a lasting, important one.
Serbs who for years acquiesced to the warmongering policies of Milosevic, as well as the corrupt, self-enriching practices of his neo-Communist cohorts, suddenly awakened to the potential power of peaceful democratic change.
Shedding layers of fear and apathy, middle-class families, elderly pensioners and intellectuals took to the streets day after day, providing, ultimately, inspiration to other Balkan countries such as Bulgaria.
And the emperor was shown to be naked. Milosevic’s aura of invincibility, nurtured by Western officials who cast him as the pillar of peace accords in Bosnia-Herzegovina, is shattered.
But more immediate gains from the opposition’s perseverance are more difficult to cite.
Privately, several Zajedno leaders now acknowledge that they will never gain control of Belgrade, the Serbian and Yugoslav capital where their election victory would have produced the city’s first non-Communist mayor since World War II.
Instead, Zajedno will have to settle for Nis, Serbia’s second-largest city, a traditional industrial stronghold of Milosevic’s Socialist Party, where an opposition City Council was installed Monday.