A decade after Milosevic: from euphoria to resentment (Feature)

By Boris Babic Sep 30, 2010, 6:06 GMT

Belgrade - Serbs cheered the toppling of president Slobodan Milosevic on October 5, 2000, but in the 10 years since that momentous event, they have found little cause for celebration.

Milosevic's fall from grace ended a decade of fruitless conflict, isolation and economic decay. However, the prosperity that Serbs expected would follow with Milosevic's departure has failed to materialize.

Life is as hard as ever. The transition from authoritarian rule to democracy has been accompanied by rampant corruption and economic dislocation made worse by global recession.

Instead of hoped-for membership in the European Union, Serbia has isolated itself by failing to hand over war criminals and by refusing to acknowledge the independence of its former province Kosovo.

'On October 5 Serbia won an opportunity to develop,' but the country's leaders failed to grasp that chance, said Zarko Korac, a former opposition head and deputy prime minister in the first post-Milosevic government.

Authorities have been slow in cooperating with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Their inaction has strained relations with western Europe and stalled Serbia's bid to join the European Union. Eager to please a powerful nationalist constituency, they have continued to fight Kosovo's independence.

Suspected war criminal Radovan Karadzic, who enjoyed the protection of Serbia's security apparatus, was apprehended and turned over to the ICTY in 2008 - 12 years after his indictment. Another prominent war crimes suspect, Ratko Mladic, remains at large.

'Serbia remains the battlefield of those in favour of our integration with Europe and those who oppose it,' Korac told the German Press Agency dpa. He said the resulting stalemate has fueled 'frustration and rage, directed one day at the government and another at Europe.'

Korac is not alone in his view. Aleksandra Mitic, an administrator at a Belgrade high school, told dpa: 'We expected much more. Disappointment is the first thing that comes into my mind when I think about (October 5) and where we are now. Resentment is the next.'

If opinion surveys are to be believed, current leaders will face an uphill battle in parliamentary elections set for 2012. Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic's cabinet, in power the past two years, has an approval rating of just 10 per cent, according to a survey this summer by the Ipsos Strategic Marketing agency.

His predecessor's appeal is hardly better. The Democratic Party of Vojislav Kostunica, two-time Serbian prime minister, will have to work hard to get the 5 per cent of the vote required to qualify for parliament.

Mitic, who was active in opposing Milosevic in the 1990s, has little confidence in politicians' ability to effect change.

'I demonstrated many times and finally saw (Milosevic) fall in 2000. But I still feel cheated because too much is still the same. I feel as though these new authorities are mocking us,' she said. 'All they talk about is Kosovo, while we rot in corruption and poverty.'

Corruption, widespread under Milosevic, remains a problem, but ordinary Serbs are more concerned these days about low wages, unemployment and poverty. Two-thirds of respondents in a recent Gallup poll said the country was moving in 'the wrong direction.'

In fact, one of Serbia's problems may be that successive governments have made a habit of changing direction.

Under late prime minister Zoran Djindic, who was assassinated in 2003, Serbia took a clear pro-Western stance, but when Kostunica took over after his death, he steered the country towards Russia.

Cvetkovic and the current president, Boris Tadic, have led the country in one direction and then another.

On the one hand, they express a desire to join the EU; on the other, they bridle at normalizing relations with Kosovo, which they have been told is a precondition of EU membership.

This zig-zagging may finally come to an end given the ultimatum Serbia recently got from Germany.

'In our view, one can only be a member of the EU if one aims for cooperation and is ready to resolve neighborly difficulties in cooperation,' German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said when he visited Belgrade in August.