Tag Archives: Serbia

Kosovo independence tomorrow

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So Kosovo will declare its independence tomorrow.

Regular readers of this blog will already know my position on Kosovar independence: I completely lack enthusiasm for it, but think it’s the least bad solution. It’s been almost nine years since the 1999 war, and pretty much every alternative has been explored at length. The current situation, where Kosovo is run by the UN, has become deeply dysfunctional. Giving Kosovo back to Serbia is not an option.

So what will happen? Well, the Albanians are getting ready for a huge two-day party. The Serbs are divided; it’s pretty clear that President Boris Tadic prefers a policy of dignified inaction, while Prime Minister Kostunica is hinting broadly about something more aggressive. Closing the border? Turning of Kosovo’s lights? We’ll see in a day or two.

As for international recognition: somewhere between 20 and 30 countries are poised to recognize Kosovo pretty quickly, with a larger number inclined to recognize but planning to wait a bit. There’ll probably be a UN Security Council meeting next week, which will lead to much discussion but nothing concrete.

So, unless Serbia does something stupid — which is certainly possible — in the short run, not much will change. In the longer run, well, I’ve used the phrase “Balkan Taiwan” before. It’s not very close; really, Kosovo is unique. But I expect a long war of diplomatic attrition rather than a crisis. Again, we’ll see soon enough.

Eurovision: The White City in the distance

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Eurovision is in Belgrade this year. Beo Grad, the white city of Serbia! Where the Danube meets, you know, some other river!

Pretty cool, no? It will be the first Eurovision in the former Yugoslavia. (Yes, there was a Eurovision in Yugoslavia in 1989. But it wasn’t former then. Doesn’t count.) Continue reading →

Serbia votes; what happens next?

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Serbia votes tomorrow. Some observers are casting this as a choice between Good (the EU) and Evil (wicked nationalism). Eh, not really. From the point of view of most Serbian voters, it’s more like a choice between “Not so great, stumbling along, more of the same” and “What the hell, this sucks, let’s try something different”.

This is not to say that electing Nikolic would be without consequences. It would be seen abroad as a thumb in the eye of the EU and a return to old-fashioned xenophobic nationalism (even if it isn’t, at least for most Serb voters). It would stop Serbia’s progress towards EU candidacy dead for at least the next year or two. Unless Nikolic starts barking at the moon — and I don’t think he will; if he wins the election, he’ll internalize the lesson that “acting moderate is good” — I doubt foreign investment will suffer much. That said, there will be a lot of people thinking a Radical President equals a return to the good old days of the 1990s. Nikolic would have to fend those people off, because any hint of a return to the cronyocracy of the Milosevic years will cause investors to run away fast. Continue reading →

Serbia: Kostunica would prefer not to

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With three days to go before Serbia’s Presidential runoff, Prime Minister Kostunica has announced that he won’t endorse either candidate.

This is a boost to Radical Tomislav Nikolic — in the final Presidential debate last night, he thanked Kostunica for not taking a side — and a rather large slap in the face to incumbent Boris Tadic. Kostunica’s party is in coalition with Tadic’s; and when the coalition agreed to make Kostunica PM last year, part of the deal was that he’d support Tadic’s re-election. I haven’t yet been able to find what justification Kostunica is giving for reneging (or whether he’s given any at all) — if anyone knows, I’d be interested to hear.

As to why Kostunica did it… well, he hates Tadic. He endorsed him last time, but only grudgingly and at the last minute. This time I guess he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Continue reading →

Albania’s quiet President

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You don’t hear much about Albania’s President, Bamir Topi.

That’s probably a good thing. Topi was a partisan politician — he was the #2 leader of current Prime Minister Sali Berisha’s Democratic Party. But since he’s been elected, he’s acted like a national and mostly nonpartisan figure.

In this, he’s followed the lead of his predecessor, Alfred Moisiu. Moisiu, an elderly former general, had been a compromise candidate for the Presidency. To everyone’s surprise he turned out to be very good — dignified, moderate, and nonpartisan, personally honest, but capable of being very sharp when Albanian officals and politicians were being blatantly dishonest or incompetent. When Moisiu finished his five-year term last summer, there was a broad movement to draft him for a second term. (He refused. He’s nearly 80, and being President of Albania is no sinecure.) Albania hasn’t produced a lot of thoughtful, diligent and more or less honest politicians yet, so having two in a row in the Presidency is good fortune. Continue reading →

Serbia sells its energy company to Russia

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“Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain.” — Schiller

So Serbia’s government has agreed to sell its oil and gas company, NIS, to Russia’s Gazprom.

By itself there’s nothing wrong with this. What’s stupid about it is the price. NIS has a market value of around $2.8 billion. The government is selling it to Gazprom for $400 million, plus the promise of another $500 million in investment over the next five years. In other words, Gazprom — a company not exactly strapped for cash — is getting a windfall of almost $2 billion, at the expense of one of the poorest countries in Europe.

Why is the Serbian government doing this? Several reasons, all of them bad. Continue reading →

Serbia, Round One

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So Serbia held Round One of their presidential election yesterday.

A little background. It’s only three and a half years since the last election (June 2004), but the secession of Montenegro in May 2006 caused the Serbs to adopt a new constitution. That provided for a new Presidential term, which required a new election. But the constitution wasn’t very specific as to when. A long wrangle ensued, with Prime Minister Kostunica’s party trying to put the election off as long as possible, mostly because Kostunica has come to hate incumbent President Boris Tadic a lot, and he thought later elections would get caught up in the Kosovo wrangle, putting Tadic at a disadvantage. Which is pretty much what has happened.

Meanwhile, Kostunica is ostentatiously refusing to support Tadic. This is a pretty blatant violation of the coalition agreement Tadic’s party made with Kostunica last spring, but there it is: Kostunica doesn’t think he’s bound by that sort of thing.

(If I seem a little bit hard on Kostunica, well, he’s been rather a disappointment. He’s showing a long-term pattern of festering resentment towards rivals, especially rivals who are slicker, better-spoken, more popular and/or smarter. There’s no rule that politicians have to like each other, of course, but Kostunica is bending Serbian politics to serve his personal vendettas.)

So, the first round: Tadic got 35.4%, Radical Nikolic got 39.4%, and half a dozen minor candidates split the rest.

What does it mean? Continue reading →

Dutch to veto Serbia’s SAA?

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Apparently the Dutch have said they won’t approve Serbia’s Stability and Association agreement unless Serbia comes up with suspected war criminal Ratko Mladic.

This comes from the excellent B92 site:

Holland will not let Serbia sign the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) until Ratko Mladić is transferred to the Hague [said] Dutch European Affairs Minister Frans Timmermans… in an interview published by Belgium daily Le Soir today.

“We have been saying, and I repeated this clearly, that Serbia has to cooperate fully with the Hague Tribunal. This means that Mladić has to be transferred to the Hague Tribunal prison,” said Timmermans.

By the way, I went to the Le Soir site to find the interview. You know what? Everything but the front page is pay-per-view. Cripes. What is this, 2004? That just seems so very Belgian somehow…

Anyway:
Continue reading →

Kosovo, Kosovo, blah blah blah

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So Kosovo continues to creep — soooo slowly — towards some sort of independence.

Serbia is having a Presidential election this weekend, with a runoff two weeks later. There’s a tacit agreement that nothing should happen before then… the assumption being that Kosovar independence might tip the balance between the incumbent President (moderate and basically decent Boris Tadic) and his challenger (odious populist-nationalist Tomislav Nikolic).

Serbian Prime Minister Kostunica — who, honestly, seems to be getting dumber and more stubborn with each passing year — has said that if the EU sends a mission to Kosovo, Serbia won’t sign a Stabilization and Association agreement with the EU. Brussels has said it will wait a bit (i.e., until after the election). I can see the case for that, but once the election is over… well, this strikes me as the sort of bluff that’s crying out to be called. “Oh, we won’t take the next step towards EU candidacy!” “Fine… don’t.”
Continue reading →