Sunday, October 3, 1999

Serbian Radical Party

dr Vojislav Seselj, president of the Party foto: FreeSerbia

When original Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) split in two in May 1990, smaller of two factions existed for some while under the name of Serbian Chetnik Movement (SCP) (larger faction kept the original name). Its founder and leader was Vojislav Seselj, the youngest Ph.D. of legal science in Tito's Yugoslavia. During the eighties, he became famous after his hunger strike, which he did as a political prisoner in Zenica jail. He was defended by the most famous lawyers of the times, who were appointed by activists of Dobrica Cosic's Committee for Freedom of Speech.

    Since SCP couldn't get registered under that title, because of "arousing religious and national hatred", Seselj was elected as an independent MP into the state Parliament in 1991. He was elected during additional ballots in Rakovica, because the place of the deceased writer Miodrag Bulatovic, MP for SPS (socialists) was vacated. Seselj has taken victory over Borislav Pekic, another prominent writer and a candidate for Democrat Party (DS).

    Afterwards, alongside with some of city and county boards of the People's Radical Party (NRS) of Veljko Guberina, headed by the Kragujevac NRS board of Tomislav Nikolic, "Toma the Undertaker", Seselj founds the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) which takes part in May 1992 elections (boycotted by other opposition parties) for the constitutional federal parliament and gets as much as twelve hundred thousand ballots in the mixed electoral system.

    SRS is getting large coverage on the state television from the very beginning, and therefore takes the votes from many nationally more radical socialists. This assumption is proved by the total of SPS and SRS ballots at all elections so far - it's always 2.3 to 2.5 million. This is the main reason why many don't take SRS for a opposition party, but rather as a government's "spare" party, i.e. "constructive" opposition. The regime would never issue the statements like those of Seselj, because of the manipulated voters of SPS who still believe they are voting a left wing party, and because of the international public which should be scared off with "opposition" worse than Milosevic himself.

    In December 1992, on the repeated federal and premature state elections, SRS repeats the success from May and gains more than million votes again, which takes some 70 MPs (in the state parliament of 250) in the proportional electoral system. The socialists manage to create a minority government, supported by radicals' voting, but without them taking part in it.

    Still, in autumn of 1993, after the fiasco of Vance-Owen plan for Bosnia, which was rejected by Radovan Karadzic and the Pale parliament, and supported and stubbornly forced by Milosevic, Cosic and Mitsotakis (Greek prime minister at the time) - Seselj demanded a vote of mistrust against the state government of prime minister Nikola Sainovic. When Serbian Renewal Movement announced support to this proposition, the very same moment Milosevic announced through his TV Bastille that the Parliament is dismissed, and he scheduled premature elections for December 1993.

    Those were hard times for Seselj. Mira Markovic, Milosevic's wife, wrote about him as an "primitive chauvinist Serbia should be ashamed of", and her lackeys like Zoran "Baki" Andjelkovic and Gorica Gajevic repeated that like a choir. On the other side, Seselj claimed that Milosevic is "the greatest criminal in Serbia", and that Mira is "the red witch of Dedinje". Verbal war culminated with arrest and detention of Seselj and his party comrades because of violence in parliament and "harming the respectfulness" of the President of State, with radicals trying to outperform each other in terms of length of prison days.

    That's the year when SRS won only 600 thousand votes, which will turn to be their weakest score among their electoral successes so far. The radicals calm down somewhat then, though they're still merciless critics of Milosevic's policy towards Bosnia and Karadzic. They make treaties within opposition, first in the "parallel parliament" of 1995, then 1996 in the "technical coalition" with DS and Vojislav Kostunica's DSS. Still, they enter the 1996 elections alone, win the municipality of Zemun and about 800,000 votes for the federal parliament.

    In 1997, because of the boycott of DS and DSS, they gain 1,200,000 votes at the state elections, and Seselj himself "beats" Zoran Lilic (SPS, federal president so far) in presidential elections. After they were nullified, the presidential elections are repeated, where, thanks to an incredible theft of ballots in Kosovo, Seselj gets defeated by Milan Milutinovic (SPS). In Drenica, stronghold of militant Albanians, Milutinovic gets more than 90% of possible registered voters' votes, and by electoral experts' calculations, at least 200-300 thousands of Albanians, or maybe even half a million, had voted at least once for Lilic or Milutinovic.

    In 1998, after three months' marathon of negotiations, the radicals (and not the SPO) get into the so-called "war" government of Serbia. Seselj and Nikolic became vice-presidents of the government, and the young Aleksandar Vucic became the minister of information. This government brought uncivilized laws on University and information, ran a couple of offensives against the armed Albanians and got Serbia into a war against NATO. After they resigned when bombing was over, the radicals ministers were given a prime minister's decree demanding them to stay; after that, they actually joined the federal government as well.

    Violence was always Seselj method of political struggle. He insulted people he addressed, broke in while they spoke, falsely accused or twisted their words. Beyond his common verbal violence, Seselj has, in several occasions, used physical violence as well. in 1990, he had beaten one of his party comrades of SCP with a baseball bat; he pulled his gun at the students, and in the BKTV studio his bodyguard has beaten Nikola Barovic, attorney, who was defending the Barbalic family, delodged in (Seselj-run) municipality of Zemun just for being Croats.

    There are pictures of him with a machine gun in his hand, in his own paramilitary units in the torn-down Vukovar (1991), he wanted to rename village Hrtkovci in Srem, with Croatian majority, into Srbislavci, and he was also noted for making lists of "treacherous reporters". Speaking in popular TV show "Minimaksovizija" he promised killing of Moslems with "rusty spoons" (1993), his MP Vakic has knocked out MP Markovic (of SPO) in parliament lobby, thus causing disorder on the square in front of the building; it culminated in his fight with the parliament security in 1994.

    All of this made him a favorite in the "chauvinist international". He cooperates with Le Pin (France), Zhirinovsky (Russia), Heider (Austria), and the Slovakian chauvinists. Unexpectedly, he never made contacts with Paraga (Croatia), Jelincic (Slovenia), Curk (Hungary) or the neonazis in Germany or neofascists in Italy.

    He announced one of the chauvinists, the Spanish "noble" Dolgorukov, to be heir to the Nemanjic dynasty, and set him as a candidate pretendant to the throne, which was a favorite sport of Serbian nationalists of the time. The deceased priest Momcilo Djujic, the leader of Krajina chetniks of WWII, "assigned" a title of chetnik duke to Seselj in 1990, and then he disgraded him in 1998 for joining a "communist" government of Serbia.

    Alongside with varying relations with Milosevic, Seselj had varying relations with people he was close to in the past. Vuk Draskovic was the best man at his wedding, but when original SPO fell apart, Vojislav accused Vuk for theft of the money received from chetnik emigrants. Since then they are worst political and personal enemies. Dobrica Cosic got Seselj out of jail several times in eighties, which he "returned" with fathomless amount of hatred, libel and mistreatment, specially when he was abolishing Cosic from the post of the federal president in 1993.

Trivia

    At the beginnings of multipartism in Serbia, Seselj performed his public addresses in front of Zagreb restaurant, where he, in two sizes too small T-shirt, with madness in his eyes and very notable speech fallacy (he can't pronounce "r" ), he harassed the passers-by and distributed his misunderstood books for free. Only ten years later, after having been an MP in the parliament, a warrior in Croatia, the speaker but then also a convictee of the regime, then a nullified state president, it's quite possible that in Serbia, the very same man operates, after all this, as a vice president of the Government, with unhidden ambition to, some day, replace Milosevic himself.