Serb Strongman Wins Yugoslav Presidency

Barely five months ago, he seemed a wounded politician struggling to maintain his authoritarian rule. On Tuesday, Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was elected president of Yugoslavia, ensuring a place in power probably well into the next century.

Milosevic was the only candidate and won a near-unanimous vote in the rump Yugoslavia’s two-house parliament in the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade. His Socialist Party holds a plurality of seats and managed to block any competing candidacies.

Widely blamed for instigating the bloody wars that ripped Yugoslavia apart and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, Milosevic has nevertheless proved himself the consummate political survivor.

He was barred by the constitution from a third term as president of Serbia, which together with tiny Montenegro makes up the rump Yugoslavia. Instead, he decided to become president of Yugoslavia--after taking steps to strengthen what until now was a largely ceremonial post.

Milosevic recently transferred key aides from Serbian posts to federal jobs, and there is speculation that he may try to build a federal police service. Opposition politicians also predict that he will attempt to change constitutional limits on the federal presidency to cement his continued role as the country’s dominant strongman.

Milosevic will take his new four-year post July 23, and general elections for his replacement as Serbian president must be held within two months. Already, a bitter battle is shaping up. One of Yugoslavia’s most strident ultranationalists, Vojislav Seselj, an advocate of the “ethnic cleansing” that drove Muslims and Croats from their homes through murder and intimidation, began campaigning months ago and leads some opinion polls.

The media machine that Milosevic has controlled for most of his 10 years in power immediately went into action Tuesday. Minutes after the vote in parliament, official Radio Belgrade was full of “people on the street” comments praising the man they have lately taken to calling “comrade Milosevic.”

“Yugoslavia will be much stronger with this election,” said one of the allegedly random interviewees. “This will prove Yugoslavia has a future.”

Milosevic’s divided opposition was less sanguine.

“He is certainly a skillful politician, able to dominate and to have a monopoly wherever he rules,” said Zoran Djindjic, Belgrade’s new opposition mayor. “But this is bad for the development of the country that he rules over. I am afraid that our state, with him as a leader, will continue to go backward.”

Throughout the past winter, Milosevic weathered relentless, daily demonstrations by tens of thousands of people protesting election fraud that robbed opposition candidates of several municipal election victories.

The demonstrations snowballed into the largest and most sustained challenge ever to the autocratic Balkan strongman. Finally--his government broke and increasingly isolated by a world community that had just started to warm up to him--Milosevic relented. In February, he allowed the opposition its victories.

At the time, Milosevic seemed weak and unsure of himself, according to diplomats who dealt with him. But ever since, he has gradually regained ground, resorting to the same shrill nationalistic tones that he used to hold on to power in the late 1980s. He received an important boost with the fire sale of 49% of the state telecommunications system to Italian and Greek companies, an instant injection of nearly $800 million in cash.

His only potential obstacle to the Yugoslav presidency was the cooperation of lawmakers from Montenegro, some of whom recently broke ranks and voiced opposition to the Serbian leader. But when the vote was taken Tuesday, a sufficient number of Montenegrins remained loyal to Milosevic.