Socialist Action /September 2000
Key Elections Loom in Former Yugoslav
Nations
By GERRY FOLEY
 Political tensions
are rising again in the area of the former Yugoslavia. Elections are scheduled
in the next two months in Kosovo, the rump Yugoslavia, and Macedonia. In
all three places, fundamental questions will be at stake.
The neo-Stalinist regime in Belgrade has been pulling
out all the stops to make the Sept. 24 elections in the rump Yugoslavia
into a plebiscite for Milosevic's Greater Serbian nationalist line.
For example, his minister of information, Goran
Matic, told the somewhat oppositional magazine Nin (Aug. 31 issue) that
the Democratic Opposition included parties representing oppressed national
groups, which "are the continuers of the occupiers of Yugoslavia during
World War II."
It is notable that Matic did not even mention Montenegro,
although the regime insists that it is going to conduct the elections there
despite the opposition of the Montenegran government. The latter has called
for a boycott of the elections in protest against changes the Milosevic
regime has made in the Yugoslav constitution reducing the autonomy of the
last republic in the "Yugoslav Federation" besides Serbia.
In the same issue of Nin, there was an interview
with the Montenegran minister of foreign affairs, Branko Lukovec, who announced
that the Yugoslav Federation was "about to die." He stated: "That
is not Montenegro's will but the will of the people who have been governing
the Federation, who have led it from conflict to conflict to greater and
greater isolation."
The Belgrade daily Politika constantly reports
groups of workers signing petitions in support of Milosevic as the defender
of the nation. In its Sept. 2 issue, it featured a speech by the chief of
staff of the "Yugoslav" army, General Nebosja Pavkovic, proclaiming
that Milosevic's military was ready to return to Kosovo: "Let today
go down in history as the date when our state security forces began their
return to sacred Serbian soil."
The fascist-like Serbian Radical Party, Milosevic's
major partner in his "Government of National Unity," has been
saying that the main issues in the election are defense of Greater Serbia
and the recovery of Kosovo.
For example, the Sept. 29 Politika quoted the Radical
presidential candidate, Tomislav Nikolic, as saying: "The most important
task in the unification of the process of liberating and unifying the Serb
lands is to keep Kosovo in the framework of Serbia and to bring about a
rapid return of Serbian police and the Yugoslav army to the southern Serbian
region [Kosovo]."
The Serbian Center for the Study of Politics and
Public Opinion did a poll in August that showed the Democratic Opposition
candidate, Vojislav Kostunica, running well ahead of Milosevic, 35 percent
to 23 percent for the ruling strongman, with 5 percent each for the other
two presidential candidates-the Radical Tomislav Nikolic and Vojislav Mihajlovic
of the Serbian Renewal Movement-and another 29 percent undecided or not
intending to vote.
The Serbian Renewal Movement, which was in Milosevic's
government until the Kosovo war, decided not to join the united opposition
slate. Its candidate is the grandson of the leader of the Serbian partisans
who collaborated with the Germans during World War II, Draza Mihajlovic.
His discourse has been quite right-wing. The Serbian Renewal Movement in
principle is for the restoration of the monarchy.
Given the threat of civil war implicit in the campaign
of the government parties and the possibilities for fraud offered by the
Montenegran boycott and the organization of the vote in the Kosovo Serbian
enclaves, where Milosevic supporters will organize what voting takes place,
it is hard to predict the outcome.
Nonetheless, it is clear that tensions are very
high in rump Yugoslavia. Milosevic needs to get at least the appearance
of a victory to carry through the crackdown he has prepared for by getting
the Belgrade parliament to adopt a draconian censorship law and an "antiterrorism"
law.
Milosevic is continuing to play the nationalist
card, although it seems to be becoming less effective as the series of defeats
it has led to becomes clear to the Serbian people. In fact, there is a competition
among all the self-proclaimed Serbian nationalists to win the favor of imperialism,
as Milosevic himself won it in the past.
Kosovars' preparation to run their own country
The local elections scheduled for October in Kosovo
are directly interconnected with the Serbian elections. The Milosevic government
has called for the Serbs to boycott them. The Kosovo Albanian nationalists
see them as a way of gaining some say in the running of their own country,
and therefore as a preparation for independence.
For the imperialist administration these elections
are a test of their success in coopting a section of the new Albanian nationalist
movement that coalesced around the Kosovo Liberation Army so as to get
the political support in Kosovo that they need to impose their policy.
Their former acolyte, Ibrahim Rugova, the president
of the Albanian parallel government, was largely discredited by his passivity
in the period following Milosevic's dissolution of Kosovo's autonomous institutions
and especially during the Serbian repressive onslaught in 1998-1998.
The imperialists won a major success with the majority
of the old KLA leadership represented by Ibrahim Thaci, who signed the Rambouillet
Treaty for the Albanian insurgent forces. Thaci followed up his option by
forming a new party, the Democratic Party, whose claims to represent the
continuity of the KLA will be tested for the first time in the October local
elections.
The more radical of the militant nationalist groups,
the National Movement for the Liberation of Kosovo (LKCK), however, has
joined with a number of other parties in the Alliance for the Future to
push for the independence of the Kosovars from the imperialist administration.
The LKCK is the political hard core of this alliance,
but it has no history as an electoral party, having been committed in the
past to underground preparation for an armed uprising. It is a pan-Albanian
revolutionary nationalist party that remains underground in Albania, Macedonia,
Montenegro, and the Albanian-inhabited area bordering Kosovo ("Eastern
Kosovo").
In its years of underground work in Kosovo, the
LKCK claimed to be oriented to mobilizing the masses. It played an important
role in the organization of the KLA, an armed force of between 30,000 and
50,000 fighters. But these elections will be the first test of the ability
of the LKCK to develop a mass political line.
In the run-up to the elections, KFOR, the imperialist
military force, decided to occupy one of the facilities of the Trepca mining
complex, a lead factory employing a few hundred workers. It used a flimsy
pretext for this, that the foundry was polluting the area with lead dust.
In fact, this was a scandalous argument given the
environmental damage caused by the NATO bombing. But it was only a pretext.
The real reason was that the UN administration needed to gain some more
credibility with the Albanian population prior to the elections.
The sharpest difference between the UN administration
and the Albanians has been the former's allowing the Serbs to seize the
industrial centers of Mitrovica north of the Ibar river and incorporate
them into their enclaves.
Until now, with the exception of a few hundred
Albanian maintenance workers at the Stary Trg mine, only Serbian workers
have remained on the job, when in Kosovo as a whole 80 percent of the Albanian
workers remain unemployed.
Before the war, the majority of people living in
this area north of the Ibar were Albanians. But most of them were driven
out during the war, and the UN has allowed the ethnic cleansing there to
continue.
The Serbian government and its supporters in Mitrovica
have been raising a hue and cry about the UN's seizure of the lead foundry.
The Serbian opposition media has pointed out that no one (except some die-hard
Stalinist groups) is taking Serbian protests seriously these days in the
West, given the history of the Milosevic regime and its crude chauvinist
propaganda and Stalinist style.
But the Serbian protests in Mitrovica itself did
reveal some truths hidden from both the Serbian and international public.
Milosevic's local supporters charged Oliver Ivanovic, leader of the local
Serbian paramilitaries, with "spreading false information" by
telling the workers that Milosevic was preparing to sell the Trepca complex
to foreign capitalists.
In its Aug. 31 issue, Nin interviewed a number
of Serbian workers who have participated in the paramilitary force guarding
the Serbian enclave. They expressed feelings of being betrayed by the Serbian
authorities. At the same time, Milosevic's supporters are accusing Oliver
Ivanovic of national betrayal.
Macedonia: ethnic discrimination
Macedonia, which neighbors Kosovo, has been torn
by a similar national conflict. About a third of the population are Albanians,
who have been systematically discriminated against by rulers basing themselves
on the majority Slavic population. Young Albanians I talked to in Skopje
in August told me that Albanians could not get an education or jobs in Macedonia.
The present government has been less anti-Albanian
than previous ones. It includes an Albanian party. But the tensions are
clearly increasing. Some Albanian leaders made statements (played up in
the Belgrade press) about armed resistance. In these conditions, the future
of the Macedonian state may be at stake in the snap elections the government
has been forced to call.
Throughout the region the rebellion of the oppressed
Albanian people remains a force making it difficult to stabilize governments
able to pursue the restoration of capitalism. At the same time, the national
conflict that arises from the oppression of the Albanians has provided openings
for imperialist maneuvers to gain a foothold in the area.
It is unlikely therefore that any effective movement
against capitalist restoration and for international workers solidarity
can be built unless it comes out strongly from the first in defense of
the Albanians' right of self-determination.
There is still no sign of any major forces in Serbia
breaking with chauvinism, and therefore the Kosovar Albanians I talked to
in August were quite pessimistic about the upcoming elections in Serbia.
Even a victory of the opposition could threaten
them, since the imperialists are looking to an opposition victory to enable
them to hand Kosovo back to Serbia. The imperialists know that they cannot
get away with this as long as Milosevic is in power. And they show no sign
of retreating from their position that Kosovo must remain part of Serbia.
Nonetheless, the upcoming elections will be major
political tests that may clarify some issues and thus prepare the way for
the emergence of forces that can begin to move toward a solution of the
conflicts that have led the Balkans deeper and deeper into ruin over the
last 10 years.
Socialist Action /September 2000 |