SERBIA & MONTENEGRO: The citizens of Serbia go to the polls tomorrow to choose new leaders following the collapse last month of the country's first democratic government since the fall of the Milosevic regime in October 2000, writes Rory Keane
As noted by the EU's foreign policy chief, Mr Javier Solana, during a visit to Belgrade on December 15th, the choice faced by the Serbian electorate is a stark one between the future and the past, between Europe and isolation.
Since the assassination of the country's reform-orientated Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic, gunned down by a sniper in Belgrade on March 12th, the Serbian government has faced a number of severe crises.
Following the assassination, the government immediately decreed a state of emergency in the country. The emergency, while resulting in the arrest of thousands, failed in its objective of tracking down the notorious mafia leade Legija, alleged to have ordered the killing of Djindjic.
The Serbian government has also struggled throughout most of 2003 to deal with the thorny question of co-operation with the International Criminal Court for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which was established after the Balkan wars of the 1990s in order to bring war criminals to justice.
In the eyes of some Serbs, ICTY-indicted war criminals are heroes who fought and lost in the name of Serbia's honour. As a testimony of support for one such indictee, Belgrade's chief of police, Gen Lukic, more than 1,000 uniformed police officers symbolically stood to attention in Belgrade's central square on a bitterly cold Friday afternoon last October and vowed not to hand over their chief to the ICTY.
Meanwhile, Serbia's Gen Mladic remains on the run from ICTY indictment on charges of having ordered the killing of 7,000 Muslims in Srebrenica during the war in Bosnia.
Along with the pain of co-operating with the ICTY, Serbia is also struggling to accept that the UN-administered province of Kosovo, for centuries the cradle of Serb civilisation, has no future as part of Serbia. Kosovo has been an international protectorate since the Nato bombing campaign of 1999, which drove Milosevic's army out of the province.
The future of the protectorate will almost certainly not involve a return to Belgrade rule. Representing another insult to the former mighty Yugoslavia, the name "Yugoslavia" itself officially died this year, being simply replaced with the names of the two remaining republics in a new "union" of Serbia and Montenegro.
The jury is out on how long this new EU-engineered union between Serbia and Montenegro can survive, with Montenegro making increasing noises that it may sooner rather than later declare outright independence.
As outlined here, given the colossal emotional and political problems faced by Serbia in 2003, the republic more than ever needs a Djindjic-like figure to carry the country and its people.
However, in Djindjic's sorely missed absence, the Serbian government has fallen. In Djindjic's equally sorely missed absence from the ballot paper on December 28th, his reform- orientated Democratic Party seems set for severe electoral disappointment.
Worryingly, in the place of the Democratic Party, the old nationalist guard of the Balkans is getting ready to re-enter the political fray.
Most notably, Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president who is currently facing war crime charges in The Hague, may be elected, after being placed on the electoral list of his once-dominant socialist party.
Although bound to remain in the Hague court, under Serbian election law there is nothing preventing Milosevic from being elected on the socialist party list. Alongside him, another alleged war criminal, Vojislav Seselj, who also faces countless charges by the ICTY, will most probably be elected, while his ultranationalist radical party appears poised to become the biggest in the future Serbian parliament.
The radicals will not, however, have enough votes to form a government. Meanwhile, in a show of democratic credentials, all major democratically-orientated parties have publicly said that they will not form a post-election coalition with the radicals.
Into this bleak scenario enters the anti-hero, Vojislav Kostunica, a man who saved Serbia once before from chaos during and after Milosevic's ousting from power. The calm Belgrade law professor appears set to make his second coming in Serbia.
Kostunica, the unlikely figure who solidified the opposition against Milosevic and thereafter became the first democratic president of Yugoslavia, may well become Serbia's next prime minister. As leader of the largest Christian Democratic party, the popular Kostunica is seen by many Serbs as the only figure who can solidify the democratic option in Serbia.
Many liberal and reform-minded Serbs, nevertheless, see the soft nationalist as too slow and conservative to make the hard decisions required.
Kostunica is likely to look to the former economic think-tank turned political party, G17 PLUS, as a main coalition partner.
In reality, however, it is too early to forecast the make-up of the post-election coalition or to say who will be Serbia's next prime minister. A lot will depend on the post-election mathematics and it should not be ruled out that the leader of one of the small parties may take on the most challenging and difficult job in Serbia today.
Dr Rory Keane is a project researcher on EU foreign policy, funded by the European Commission, in Belgrade