EUROPE : Serbian Strongman Just Getting Stronger : President Milosevic isn’t even on Sunday’s ballot. But few doubt he will be eventual victor.

Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic isn’t even on the ballot for Sunday’s election, yet any of the possible outcomes of the parliamentary balloting will--sooner or later--bestow victory on the Balkan strongman.

While Milosevic’s five-year rule has seen Serbia fall from relative prosperity to utter ruin, he is on the verge of fulfilling a long-held nationalist dream of uniting the widely dispersed Serbs in a state expanded by brute force and brilliant maneuvering.

A reportedly imminent carve-up of Bosnia-Herzegovina would award most of the territory seized by Milosevic allies to the emerging Greater Serbia. Milosevic has only to give the word to his Bosnian proxy, Radovan Karadzic, to compel Bosnian Serbs to cede the last scraps of land in the way of a partition.

Likewise, according to sources here and in the Croatian capital of Zagreb, the standoff over Serb-occupied areas of Croatia has been resolved and may be made public as soon as next week when the Balkan combatants meet for peace talks in Geneva.

Milosevic and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman have reportedly negotiated a land swap that would give agriculturally rich and economically strategic eastern Croatia to Serbia in exchange for the rocky wasteland known as Krajina.

Sunday’s election was called to replace the fractious 250-seat Parliament disbanded by Milosevic on Oct. 20 after rivals in the Serbian Radical Party threatened a no-confidence vote in the government headed by Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia.

“I don’t think he would have called for new elections if he thought he would lose,” said Bratislav Grubacic, head of an independent Belgrade news agency. “I think he can make any of the results work in his favor.”

Serbia’s notoriously unreliable opinion polls predict a badly fractured vote, with support for the Socialists down to about 30% because of the economic disaster brought on by Belgrade’s bankrolling of wars in Croatia and Bosnia, as well as harsh U.N. sanctions imposed in a failed bid to compel Serbs to withdraw from the conflicts.

The latest poll projects about 103 seats in the new Parliament for the Socialists, trailed by the DEPOS reform coalition with about 43 seats, the Radicals with 41, the Democratic Party with 23 and the new Party of Serbian Unity, headed by accused war criminal Zeljko (Arkan) Raznjatovic, with 15 seats.

But most polling is conducted by telephone, which tends to exclude voters in the countryside who have no phones and rely solely on the pro-Milosevic broadcast media for their information. Rural voters are the staunchest supporters of Milosevic.

Polls ahead of the last parliamentary vote a year ago showed Milosevic and his Socialists behind DEPOS and its presidential contender, California pharmaceuticals magnate Milan Panic.

Panic, a naturalized American citizen who briefly returned to his Yugoslav homeland to serve as federal prime minister, alleged that Milosevic won by vote-tampering. But the Serbian president’s 56% to 35% victory was considered too large to have been entirely fraudulent.

Even if projections of a strong opposition showing this year prove accurate, Milosevic has much to gain by letting the alternative parties form a governing coalition.

The economy is racked by world-record hyper-inflation that saw prices rise by 20,000% last month alone. Half the work force is idle, and salaries have dropped from a prewar monthly average of $250 to less than $10.

The Serbian constitution vests most power in the president. And Milosevic, whose term runs another four years, already has de facto control of the Yugoslav army and the vast federal police force.

“His smartest move might be to let the opposition govern for a while and take the rap for economic collapse. Then he could declare martial law to end the chaos,” said a Western diplomat who believes the Socialists will manage an outright win.