Setback for Liberty
by Nebojsa Malic
Following the first round of presidential http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3240 moment as if the beleaguered Balkans country might awaken from its propaganda-induced stupor.
Having lost the first round, incumbent president Boris Tadic launched a http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2710 of intimidation and panic, telling the Serbians that a vote for the challenger – Radical candidate Tomislav Nikolic – would mean a return to blockade, sanctions and war. Tadic’s past promises, about EU integration and prosperity, were reduced to treasury minister Mladjan Dinkic offering the people free money if they voted the “right way.”
Even with the uncivil campaign, overwhelming support of the media and almost bottomless coffers (courtesy of outside sponsors), Tadic merely squeaked by into the second term. Some analysts in Serbia expressed hope that the razor-thin margin would sober up the president and his coterie of Tranzis; so far, that has not been the case. In the West, the election was regarded as a referendum; Tadic’s victory would mean Serbia was accepting the separation of Kosovo and eventual annexation by the EU. A victory for Nikolic would have meant a turn towards Russia – and a perfect excuse to seize Kosovo. As if in a plot hatched by the Sith, whoever won, Serbia would lose.
A perfect illustration of how the Serbian vote was perceived in the West was an analysis published on Forbes online on January 19. Serbia could “choose to grimly hold onto the breakaway Albanian majority province and sever ties with the European Union,” or “accept the humbling reality of Kosovar independence and embrace a new future” within the Brussels superstate.
It accurately predicted Tadic would trail Nikolic in the first round, and actually foresaw the precise winning strategy for the incumbent: “paint Nikolic as a reactionary who’s taking Serbia back into the isolation it escaped from… in 2000.”
Even the signals the West was taking from the electoral outcome were predetermined: if Nikolic won, Belgrade would oppose the severing of Kosovo, but: “If Tadic wins, it will mean that Serbs have decided economic progress and good relations with Serbia’s neighbors are more important than the illusion that Serbia simply cannot exist without forcing Kosovo’s Albanian majority into accepting rule from Belgrade once again.”
Notice the completely reversed thesis here. In reality, it isn’t Belgrade forcing anything on the Albanians, but the Albanian separatists and their Western sponsors are forcing Belgrade.
Tadic’s campaign has made much of the supposed “economic progress” and relations with the EU. It was even said that Brussels and Belgrade would finally sign the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) at the end of January. Left unmentioned was that the actual SAA talks had begun in in 2005, and never amounted to much. They did serve as a pretext to set up a EU overseer to monitor Montenegro’s independence referendum. (Miroslav Lajcak was later rewarded for his efforts by becoming the viceroy of Bosnia).
http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=12320