Is Milosevic Finished?

"He's finished." No matter what street of Belgrade you walk down these days, you will run into this graffiti. Activists of the student pro-democracy movement "Otpor" (Resistance) have put it up on virtually every wall in the city. "He" refers to Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Yugoslavia and the last dictator in Europe. Milosevic has been the dominant political figure in the Balkans for the past 13 years, leading Serbs into four wars, including last year's confrontation with NATO over Kosovo.

Why is Milosevic finished? Elections in Yugoslavia are scheduled for Sept. 24, and the "Otpor" slogan is at the center of a "get out and vote" campaign devised to persuade the people of Yugoslavia that the time is right to say goodbye to Milosevic. But the road to freedom and democracy is bound to be full of dangerous bumps and curves.

Milosevic, the leader of the Socialist Party of Serbia (formerly the Communist Party), used a surge of Serbian nationalism in late 1980s to come to power. Since then he has been the president of Serbia and then of the new Yugoslavia, which consists of Serbia and the much smaller republic of Montenegro. His popularity has been declining throughout the 1990s, hitting all-time lows last year after the defeat in the Kosovo conflict. He now has the support of only 20 to 25 percent of the population.

When Milosevic decided to call the elections in late July, he was counting on friction among his opponents to bring him a relatively easy victory. Two major political forces are in opposition to Milosevic: the pro-Western government of Montenegro and the Serbian opposition, which is notorious for its bitter fragmentation. The government of Montenegro decided to boycott the elections despite U.S. diplomatic pressure, and the Serbian opposition again failed to unite. The largest opposition party, the Serbian Renewal Movement, decided to nominate their own presidential candidate, while the other major opposition parties came together under the name of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS). What Milosevic failed to predict was that DOS would grow exponentially in strength and that it would produce a worthy opponent to Milosevic himself, Dr. Vojislav Kostunica.

A former professor at the Belgrade University Law School, Kostunica was expelled in the 1974 by the Communist authorities because of his democratic beliefs. He has been active in Serbia's political arena for the past decade and remains the only major opposition politician who never even met Milosevic personally, let alone cooperated with his regime. Even his opponents admit that he is stubbornly persistent in his views, a fact that has contributed to his reputation of incorruptibility and honesty. He is also a moderate nationalist and a relentless critic of the West, which makes him all the more appealing to potential Milosevic supporters. In addition, it is impossible for the regime to brand him as a NATO puppet, the favorite accusation in Serbia since the Kosovo conflict.

From the outset of the campaign, Kostunica was forced to fight an extremely uneven and dirty battle. Milosevic's war against the independent media, which culminated in May with a violent takeover of Belgrade's only independent TV station, left Serbia in complete media darkness. As a result, Kostunica can access the voters only through a strenuous door-to-door campaign. Furthermore, Milosevic doesn't hesitate to use the police to crack down on his opponents, with arrests, kidnappings and beatings becoming a daily occurrence. Despite the dramatic escalation in political violence, Kostunica succeeded in uniting the anti-Milosevic Serbia. Opinion polls demonstrate that he would win in a landslide if no electoral fraud were to occur.

Despite a two-to-one advantage in the electorate, however, Kostunica's victory is far from certain. Milosevic is preparing to commit fraud on a level never seen before. Electoral committees are state-controlled and DOS can do little to ensure the legitimacy of the election process. The regime will eliminate the opposition supporters from the lists of eligible voters while allowing its supporters to vote under several names. Employees of state-run enterprises will receive pre-filled voting slips in advance. As if that was not enough, Milosevic is ready to openly steal the votes of the Kosovo Albanians, who will not participate in the election. In short, the Yugoslav electoral process resembles a game of cards where one player gets to decide on the rules after having seen the hands of all the other players.

Milosevic is capable of stealing as many as one million votes, which in a country with 7.5 million eligible voters can be a decisive advantage. Milosevic's media will then declare the victory of "patriotic forces" over "NATO-sponsored traitors" and the police are expected to be as successful in crushing popular protest as they have been on several occasions during the past year. A recent Kostunica statement demonstrates that the opposition is painfully aware of its position. "It is very hard for me to imagine Milosevic winning fairly," said Kostunica, "and even harder to imagine him accepting my victory."

Severely overmatched, DOS's only plausible strategy is to bring people to the streets in large numbers even before Milosevic has a chance to declare his victory. The opposition will hold rallies in major cities on the night after the election where results will be announced as they arrive. They hope that the presence of millions of people on the streets of Serbian cities will put Milosevic on the defensive, forcing him to accept the opposition victory rather than risking a confrontation which might lead to divisions and defections within his own party.

How will the people of Serbia react? Will they flock to the streets to defend their votes or will they allow Milosevic to cheat them once more? This remains the biggest variable in the Yugoslav political equation. After the opposition failed in several attempts to mount massive protests in the past year, many in Yugoslavia are pessimistic. Some analysts, on the other hand, point out that the Milosevic power structure is much less homogeneous than usually assumed. They assert that the people will not sit calmly in the face of clear electoral fraud and notice that the Serbian pro-democracy movement has found new resilience in the past year, as demonstrated by the "Otpor" movement.

From a handful of radicals at a university, "Otpor" has grown into an organization with 40,000 activists in less than a year, despite constant threats, arrests and violence. By fighting violence with non-violence and the politics of fear and repression with humor, they have found support among the older population. You can hear their slogan everywhere: in the streets, in schools, on soccer fields.

And, to the dismay of the Milosevic regime, they just won't go away. A day after a state-owned building had been repainted because "Otpor" used it as a graffiti bulletin board, the people of Belgrade found a new inspiring message on it: "Paint jobs won't help. He's finished." The rest of us Serbs have no right not to take their word for it.

Srdjan L. Tanjga '01 is an applied math concentrator in Lowell House. He is a native of Belgrade, Yugoslavia and has been an active member of "Otpor," the pro-democracy movement in Belgrade, for the past five years.