Election mud wrestling

Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic claims no candidate received a majority in this week's elections, but opposition leaders who believe their candidate won are taking to the streets.

By Laura Rozen

Sep 27, 2000 | In a move aimed to buy time for Slobodan Milosevic in the wake of a crushing defeat at Sunday's Yugoslav elections, a Milosevic-controlled elections committee announced Tuesday that neither the Yugoslav president nor his opposition challenger Vojislav Kostunica had garnered enough votes to win the presidential elections in the first round. According to the committee's results, Kostunica received 48 percent of the votes cast, with 40 percent going to Milosevic. The committee scheduled a runoff between the two for October 8.

But the 18 opposition parties united in the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) say that their figures show Kostunica clearly won in the first round, with 54.66 percent of the vote, well ahead of Milosevic at 35 percent. The DOS united opposition bloc has rejected the call for a runoff and written a letter to the elections commission demanding that it reveal the lists it says it used to come up with its count.

An independent poll monitor group, the Center for Free Elections and Democracy (known by its Serbian acronym CESID), says its figures also show a first-round victory, with Kostunica at 54.4 percent and Milosevic at 37 percent. "If I were Slobodan Milosevic's advisor," CESID representative Zoran Lucic told a press conference in the Serbian capital Belgrade Tuesday, "I would suggest that he recognize the results and spare what little strength he has left because he cannot win."

Even parties outside of the united opposition bloc have said their vote monitors confirm a convincing first-round victory for Kostunica, and have called on Milosevic to accept defeat.

"It's obvious Kostunica won in the first round," Ognjen Pribicevic, an advisor to longtime opposition player Vuk Draskovic, said by telephone Tuesday. Draskovic's party, the Serbian Renewal Movement, ran its own candidate in the presidential elections who did poorly, getting less than 5 percent of the vote. Draskovic was reported to have offered his resignation from the party on Monday but it was not clear the party was going to accept it. "This is DOS's victory. But we are very happy because this is what we have been waiting for for 10 years," Pribicevic added, referring to Milosevic's defeat.

"Milosevic is trying to bide his time and, meanwhile, confuse the citizens and the opposition," Kostunica said. "The citizens and [the opposition] must overcome this attempt, even if it is not obvious. There is no moral or political reason for us to accept this disrespect of the citizens' choice." He went on to pan the commission's move as "a political fraud" and an "obvious stealing of votes."

"The regime has to accept reality: that Milosevic lost," opposition leader Zarko Korac said by telephone from Belgrade Tuesday night. "We will fight for what we think is rightfully ours, which is allowing Kostunica to become the Yugoslav president."

"The people will go to the streets, and the regime and the police and army will have to think very hard about what they are going to do about it," Korac added.

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