Belgrade was a divided city last night with Milosevic supporters holding a rally on one side of town and the opposition holding one on the other.
President Slobodan Milosevic personally did more electioneering in the last day than he has done in the weeks approaching the poll, making a controversial appearance in Montenegro in the morning and then taking part in a final congress of the government coalition in the evening.
Opposition presidential challenger Dr Vojislav Kostunica appeared before more than a hundred thousand people in a rally outside the federal parliament. They were waving flags, chanting and singing: "Save us from the madhouse, Kostunica."
Thousands of police were bussed into New Belgrade where Mr Milosevic was opening a sports hall, the embodiment of reconstruction that has been the theme of the government campaign.
The hall was supposed to have been finished in 1994 but there was not enough money then. It was built to house around 20,000 people and was packed last night.
Mr Milosevic used his to speech to attack the West. He said: "They think that they are using measures to destroy our lives - drugs, religion, sex and narcomafia . . . Just as during the bombing, we wanted to know the locators choosing the targets, now we want to know who are the locators seeking the destruction of the minds of our children and youth. And we want to know what the strategic targets are after the unsuccessful bombing."
Earlier, at a military base near Berane, 40 miles north east of the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica, Mr Milosevic addressed more than 10,000 party faithful in the independence-minded republic.
He lashed out at the West, Montenegro's leadership and Serbia's opposition, labelling them rabbits, rats and even hyenas who wish to transform this gigantic nation into a poodle at the whim of its foreign master.
"Only together can Serbs and Montenegrins resist external pressures and survive," he said, blaming the West for dismembering Yugoslavia.
He was interrupted by cries of: "Slobo, Slobo" and "Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia".
Dr Kostunica played on the themes of inclusiveness: "I'm part of you. I'm an ordinary man, like you. I don't want to change the world. My intention is, together with you, to change our state. I know that you want to live the same way as I would like to live in a normal, ordinary, democratic, European state," he said.
Then he challenged the whole style of the Milosevic era by walking to the stage through the crowd, in the light of a single small portable spotlight. It was to reinforce the theme of his speech: that he was not an inaccessible figure of the regime, distant and privileged, but simply an ordinary man.
He was constantly interrupted by anti-Milosevic slogans from the good-natured and enthusiastic crowd.
Radomir (45) a bank worker, said the Kostunica rally was: "beautiful. He was there because I want change."