Servië goed op weg

Sonja Licht, the president of the Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence wrote today a nice comment on the historical changes Serbia has undergone the past few months.

The European Union countries have signed a Stabilisation and Association Agreement with Serbia, an unambiguously pro-European coalition led by President Boris Tadić has won the election and put in place a forward-looking government, and the former Bosnian Serb nationalist leader Radovan Karadzić was extradited to the UN war-crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Yet, there are still many widespread prejudices about Serbia in the international media and public opinion. The two most well known are that the majority of Serbs continue to harbour essentially nationalist and anti-European views, and that the Serbian state's co-operation with the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is reluctant and incomplete.

The extradition of Karadzić is an appropriate backdrop against which to address both of these prejudices. Beliefs about irreducible nationalism of the Serbian people are rooted in the memories of the Balkan wars and often enhanced by mental inertia and outdated thinking on the part of some international observers and analysts. They overlook the fact that in two presidential elections, in 2004 and 2008, the democratic pro-European candidate Boris Tadić won against the ultra-nationalist candidate Tomislav Nikolić from the Serbian Radical Party. They also ignore the fact that the Serbian Radical Party has been continuously out of power since Slobodan Milosević was overthrown in October 2000.

When other parties, formerly belonging to the democratic pro-European political block, decided to join the Radicals during the parliamentary and local elections in May 2008, they all lost. By any conceivable measure, the politics of nationalism and isolation are a losing ticket in Serbia today. The real winner of these elections has been the pro-European coalition, led by Mr Tadic.

This victory was particularly remarkable when you consider that less than three months after Kosovo declared independence from Serbia this coalition named the "List for European Serbia" received 10 percent more votes than the Serbian Radical Party. За европску Србију is a coalition of Demokratska stranka, G17 Plus (liberal-conservative), Srpski pokret obnove (liberal-conservative), Liga socijaldemokrata Vojvodine (centre-left) and Sandžačka demokratska partija. One has to keep in mind that Kosovo is understood by the majority of Serbs as the cradle of the Serbian nation and its history. There is no doubt that the formal separation of Kosovo from Serbia (it has been under international rule from June 1999) and the recognition of this new state by the US and the majority of the European Union member states remain a genuine trauma for the Serbian people. Yet they have made a principled choice to stick to the European path in the most difficult of circumstances. It was a significant test, and Serbia passed. On 11 May not only the parliament and the government of Serbia changed, but the entire political map of the country did. The Serbian Radical Party used to be the single strongest party in at least two-third of municipalities across the country. Now, it is the "List for European Serbia." Defeated at the ballot box, the Radicals are also broken following their post-election split and the decision of one of their most influential leaders to form a new pro-European party.

Serbian politics are being permanently realigned around the democratic and European vision of President Tadic. If one tries to understand how important this change might be for the future of the country and the entire Balkan region, one should also pay attention to the fact that 70 percent of the Serbian population steadily supports the perspective of joining the European Union, according to successive opinion polls.

It is important to stress that the protest meeting against the arrest and extradition of Karadzic did not gather more than 15,000 participants out of a population of more than 10 million. This was many fewer that international observers had been expecting and only a fraction of those who would have turned out a few years ago.

Why is it that the Serbian people have made such a strong choice in favour of Europe and democracy? Why is it that even those opposed to the extradition of war-crime indictees did not take to the streets after Karadzić was sent to The Hague?

The answer - according Sonja Licht - is that the majority of citizens have rejected the backward looking politics of nationalism and made a genuine commitment to a different kind of future based on European values. In doing so, they have proved to be more mature and politically responsible than a great part of their political class.