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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 07/04
Yugoslavia's Presidential Elections: The Serbian People's Moment of Truth
September 19, 2000
Abstract
Since the International Crisis Group's (ICG's) last paper addressing the Serbian politicalscene, the situation on the ground inside Serbia has changed dramatically. Once Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic announced, on 27 July 2000, the 24 September date for simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and municipal elections in Serbia, the previously fractious opposition rapidly and unexpectedly united behind the nomination of Vojislav Kostunica, a constitutional lawyer and self-styled democratic nationalist with no ties to the regime or the West.
Kostunica's candidacy has fired the imagination of a surprising percentage of the Serbian people, whose renewed faith in themselves and their democratic cause has generated electoral momentum as they have come to believe that the upcoming polls could effect seismic change in their country and their future. It has also marginalised the heretofore important Serbian Renewal Party (SPO) and discredited its founder and longtime leader Vuk Draskovic, whose refusal to support the unified opposition's choice of Kostunica has cost Draskovic and the SPO significant public support.
