¡Hasta la victoria siempre!
It’s not the votes that count. It’s who counts the votes. — იოსებ სტალინი
I took my pen this morning, went to my polling place, gave some old lady instructions on how to vote (“Yes ma’am, just circle the number in front of the candidate you want to vote for. Here, take my pen, yours doesn’t work. No, no need to sign the ballot!”) and voted against Tomislav Nikolić.
I felt utterly miserable sitting in the booth and voting. All it took was to circle a number, and I felt crappy that this, most passive way of civic participation, was so hard to do.
It would be pointless to dwell upon why I voted against Nikolić — he represents a political party that is best described as national-socialist and uses methods of their 1930s counterparts.
But, it still wasn’t easy to vote for Boris Tadić. Sure, he is a relatively normal specimen of a Serb, but I feel like he kept insulting me throughout the campaign.
First of all, his party takes no interest in including the wider community in political processes in Serbia. They are perfectly in place with state policies being made in the parties that “hold” the ministries in the government, without any influences from the citizens outside the party ranks. They have furthermore institutionalized this sort of agenda setting and decision making, both by precedent, laws and the Constitution itself. This creates perfect opportunities for “interest groups”, such as tycoons and the Church to control executive and legislative branches, in a country ripe for curruption.
And now, despite all of this, Boris Tadić is calling me to join him so we can all pull together towards the EU. Fuck that! I’d like to know how am I, or anybody else, pulling for anything by simply voting? No, I’m just voting, giving Tadić and his party legitimacy to do whatever they want, however opaquely they want.
Second of all, I’m not quite sure Tadić is all that interested in the European integrations. If he were, would he bless the coalition with DSS, which is clearly content with the country remaining isolated?
Third of all, Tadić expressed some rather bigoted and undemocratic stances in the campaign. He, for example, claims that he is proud of European heritage. He supports this claim by saying that Serbia is a Christian country, perhaps forgetting that Europeans gave the humanity both the Inquisition and Nietzsche. He undermines the fact that great part of Serbian culture is closely tied to the Ottomans and Muslim influence. To say that Austro-Hungarian shit doesn’t stink while Turkish does is just… well, you get the point.
Finally, there is Kosovo, but those of you who read my blog know very well that I consider Albanians to be just as human as Serbs, and that I can’t hold high opinion of somebody who ignores wants and needs of 2.000.000 people in Kosovo.
Having said all of that: I still hope Nikolić loses these elections.
¡Hasta la victoria siempre!
Comment
Feb 5, 11:06 AM #
El pueblo unido quizás será vencido.
Feb 13, 09:40 AM #
¡Que suerte entonces Eric que el pueblo no parece muy unido!
Please tell me that your giving those instructions to the old lady is true :)
Allright then, now that the danger is safely over: what do you think of the idea that it would have been better for democracy if Nikolic had won: in that it would have shown people quite how atrocious they are, instead of having the luxury of spending another x years in opposition and claiming it would have been better under them?
Also: what do you think about the room for manouvre that Tadic has now / the constraints placed on the DS by DSS?
Feb 13, 11:41 AM #
Peregrine, yes, that old lady episode is true :)
As far as Nikolić go: I don’t know. I think most people alredy know what kind of a government the Radicals would lead and how he would behave as a president. We just recently had him being the president of the parliament for a couple of days — and he was anything but decent at that post (kept abusing the microphone and said he want Serbia to be a Russian province).
On one hand, yes — it would ruin them sooner or later, but on the other hand, it took 10 painful years for people to realize the truth about Milošević‘s government (and I’m not sure many still do).
The latest DS vs. DSS conflict is ridiculous and proves that nothing has changed. Koštunica is still da playa and he well understand the position DS is in.
I don’t think it is hard to imagine that DS is protecting the stock market and some foreign investments by keeping the current government going, and as long as their is the DSS+Radicals coalition threat, DS will not work in their fullest potential.
Keep in mind that in the first round of presidential elections, Radicals + Socialists + DSS/NS had a good majority. Radicals + Socialists alone had 49% of the voters. They would only need a percent more to be able to form a government in the future. Easily done.
Feb 16, 04:11 PM #
Pozdravljam te Dejane iz Engleske! It’s been a while since I’ve commented here, and I’ve read this post and your “Kosovo is Serbia” post and comments under both posts!
Recently I’ve been reading opinions from fellow Serbs critical of President Boris Tadic, yet I have quite a high opinion of him. Considering which, I found these two paragraphs in this post worth commenting on and questioning:
“First of all, his party takes no interest in including the wider community in political processes in Serbia. They are perfectly in place with state policies being made in the parties that “hold” the ministries in the government, without any influences from the citizens outside the party ranks.”
Yes, that is something I’ve noticed living outside Serbia about Serbian society. I think the Serbian public should be more greatly engaged and involved in the political process than they already are. However, I don’t really blame Boris Tadic and his party for such a situation, though I think he personally could assert more influence.
“They have furthermore institutionalized this sort of agenda setting and decision making, both by precedent, laws and the Constitution itself. This creates perfect opportunities for “interest groups”, such as tycoons and the Church to control executive and legislative branches, in a country ripe for curruption.”
I can see how the general political scene in Serbia with Koštunica playing a major roles has “institutionalized” such “agenda setting and decision making” by precedent, but how by law and the Constitution itself? How does the Church “control executive and legislative branches”, and how does the Church’s involvement link with curruption, or maybe I’ve just incorrectly interpreted your sentence? And surely these “interest groups” work outside the political structures as well, affecting public opinion in the process?
And regarding this sentence:
“Tadić expressed some rather bigoted and undemocratic stances in the campaign… [claiming] that he is proud of European heritage… [supporting] this claim by saying that Serbia is a Christian country, perhaps forgetting that Europeans gave the humanity both the Inquisition and Nietzsche.”
I wouldn’t call him bigoted. However, the majority of Serbia’s population according to religious confession is Orthodox, and Serbian Orthodox at that. And as president of such a country, he has to represent the majority of its people. Of course, he has to represent minorities too. And perhaps he should bear in mind, like you’ve mentioned, that a “great part of Serbian culture is closely tied to the Ottomans and Muslim influence”. Which could mean that he should attend a few Grand Productions shows, perhaps!
“…I consider Albanians to be just as human as Serbs…”
In complete agreement with you!
“…I can’t hold high opinion of somebody who ignores wants and needs of 2.000.000 people in Kosovo.”
By that you mean Boris, obviously. Well, he is the president of Serbia. And I know that many people say how as Kosovo is part of Serbia – but for how long now? – Albanians are the minority compared to Serbs. So, because of that, and in part thanks to the Constitution of the country, Boris as president of Serbia has to represent the majority will of his citizens. Of course, among his citizens are the Kosovo Albanians as well, even if the majority of them in Serbia – which Kosovo still is at this moment in time – doesn’t recognise him as their leader.
Boris doesn’t have it easy, as you can see! Still, read my article, “It looks like it’s coming”: http://balkan-anarchist.blogspot.com/2008/02/it-looks-like-its-coming.html
All the best, and apologies for the long comment!
Alan.
Feb 17, 05:14 AM #
Alan, I’d disagree about the president representing the majority will. Democracy is about compromises and consensus. If we only took majority will as enough to do things, we would totally disregard the will of ethnic minorities, Vojvodinian autonomists, sexual minorities, disabled people etc.
As far as institutionalizing this sort of decision making goes: the Constitution takes away many rights from the autonomous provinces that they held back in 1980s. It also centralizes the country, which means that policy is made in Belgrade for the whole lot.
Furthermore, political parties hold seats in the Parliament, not the representatives themselves. Needless to say, but we don’t even have people’s representatives — we have party representatives (e.g. I don’t have a person in the parliament representing my municipality or city).
Executive posts in public companies are held by party members — not by people whom the workers elect and not experts.
There is no outer control of the political parties — nobody can control their funding, their functioning etc.
The list goes on and on.
Sure it’s not Tadić‘s fault alone, but he plays a big role in the process.
Mar 21, 09:39 PM #
Dejan,
I got the address to your site from a fellow Kosovar expat who was amazed at your honesty. I am more impressed by the fact that you can see through nationalism, patrotism, etc.
I grew up in Kosovo, and only left when Serbian paramilitaries forced my family to leave at gunpoint. Before that, I had Serbian neighbours and friends. Od njih sam i naucio Srpski, ali nazalost, ovih dana, nemam s’kim da pricam, pa da ne zaboravim..
Kudos to you. Thanks for concretizing something that I’d thought had disappeared. You go to the B92 site, Natasa Kandic’s organization and other groups, hoping to find someone who doesn’t have a political agenda in mind, yet sees reality as they should. You renewed that hope in me [as tacky as this sounds].
Pozdrav iz Kanade!
Mar 25, 12:18 AM #
Falemnderit Arber! I still have strong faith in humanity. The way I see it, people here will soon realize that when you lose a neighbour, it is you who are at the biggest lost.