Yugoslavs May Be on Brink of Radical Change

Emerging from a television appearance, presidential candidate Vojislav Seselj was in no mood to hear criticism from a local human rights attorney. “You’re a dead man,” Seselj is reported to have told the attorney, Nikola Barovic, once out of camera range.

Seselj’s bodyguard then proceeded to pummel and kick Barovic, leaving the cowering man’s face a swollen mess, witnesses said. Later, an unrepentant Seselj explained that the attorney had simply slipped on a banana peel--”several times.”

On Sunday, Seselj, a xenophobic nationalist and former paramilitary commander, competes in a two-man runoff to become the next president of Serbia. He reached the race thanks to a surprising surge by his ultranationalist Radical Party in elections last month, capitalizing on anti-West paranoia and widespread disillusion with politics in Yugoslavia.

Known for brandishing pistols in parliament and spitting on his opponents, Seselj dealt an unexpected blow to his onetime ally, the powerful Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, in the Sept. 21 vote. He forced Milosevic’s proxy, Zoran Lilic, into Sunday’s presidential runoff and denied Milosevic’s Socialist Party a majority in the Serbian parliament for the first time in more than a decade in an election boycotted by the more moderate opposition.

And in neighboring Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb republic, the Radical Party also pulled off an upset in last month’s municipal elections--defeating in several cities Serbian Democratic Party led by indicted war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic.

At the same time, the Radicals rallied to the support of Karadzic hard-liners in August and September, crossing the border to face off against North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops attempting to boost moderates against Karadzic.

Seselj, 43, has not been publicly indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

But his Serbian Chetnik “volunteers,” marching under black flags emblazoned with skull and crossbones, were responsible for especially nasty cases of “ethnic cleansing”--the ejecting, principally, of non-Serbs from Serb-controlled areas via threats and violence--in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia at the start of the wars that triggered the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.

Because of that background, Western embassies refuse to deal with him. Belgraders draw Hitler-style mustaches on his campaign-poster pictures.

But today Seselj can boast a better electoral showing than any of the idols he fashions himself after: the Russian nationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky and French right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen.

“I can’t wait to come to power,” the 6-foot, barrel-chested politician told reporters.

Serbian election rules, in the end, may block Seselj from becoming president. If less than 50% of the electorate turns out to vote Sunday, the election process starts over. The election must be held again, and any and all candidates are allowed to participate.

Given the widespread apathy and disgust in Serbia, a low turnout is likely.

Serbia would be left without a president indefinitely, creating a power vacuum that Milosevic can be expected to fill.

Even so, the damage has been done to Milosevic’s Socialists, who are estimated to have lost to the Radicals half a million votes they received just last year in municipal elections.

Seselj in many ways was a creation of Milosevic--someone to do the dirty work in the war while Milosevic kept his hands clean and, later, a useful foil against whom Milosevic could appear a moderate statesman.

Now analysts here wonder if Milosevic’s creation has become his Frankenstein.

Diplomats say the Milosevic electoral machine had carefully redrawn districts, changed vote-count rules and, it is alleged, tinkered with registration lists to ensure an absolute parliamentary majority for the Socialists.

But no one won an absolute majority in the Sept. 21 vote, and the Socialists for the first time will be forced to share power--possibly with the demanding Radicals.

“The Socialists now have the Radicals breathing down their necks,” a Western diplomat said. “For Milosevic, this must have been a serious miscalculation.”

Seselj and his Radical Party owe their dramatic--many would say alarming--success in part to a sharper turn to the right and inward by Serbian voters who are disillusioned with the corruption surrounding Milosevic but who remain resentful of the West.

Seselj’s success is also helped by the utter collapse of the more moderate opposition that last winter inspired daily anti-Milosevic demonstrations but today is fractured beyond repair.

“He attracts [the] . . . hopeless, rejected and [those] lost somewhere between village and town, who are bitter . . . victims of Milosevic’s 10-year rule,” political analyst Stojan Cerovic wrote in the respected news weekly Vreme.

A coldly calculating social demagogue, Seselj has skillfully kept his message to voters simple.

While other opposition politicians seem to spend more time plotting ways to stab each other in the back, Seselj appeals directly to Serbs’ sense of patriotism, nationalism and paranoia.

He vows to fight crime, raise pensions and salaries and expel pesky Albanians or other minorities who refuse to be “loyal citizens.”

Seselj broke with Milosevic--at least publicly--after the latter abandoned the cause of the Bosnian Serbs who were fighting to rid their territory of non-Serbs.

“I’ve sustained him in power as long as he was leading the just policy,” Seselj said. “The moment he changed, I moved against him.”