Serb leader calls for new elections
Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica on Saturday called for new elections to replace the ruling coalition, citing untenable discord inside the government over Kosovo’s secession and Serbia’s own alliances with Europe.
His announcement in effect collapses the government, a casualty of Kosovo’s U.S.-backed declaration of independence issued Feb. 17 and disagreement in Serbia over how to respond.
“The government of Serbia has no united policy anymore on an important issue related to the future of the country: Kosovo as a part of Serbia,” Kostunica said in a rare Saturday news conference.
“Such a government could not function anymore,” he added. “This is the end of the government, and we should return the mandate to the people.”
Kostunica said he would ask the Serbian president Monday to formally dissolve the parliament and schedule new elections, probably on May 11, when local balloting is already planned. He stopped short of resigning, however, because doing so would trigger a process that would delay new elections.
Serbia’s three major political parties indicated that they would support Kostunica’s proposal as the best way to emerge from a crippling impasse, meaning that Monday, barring the unexpected, the government would be no more. A caretaker administration, with limited powers, would take over until the elections.
All of Serbia’s political parties opposed Kosovo’s secession from Serbia. But pro-Western parties, including that of President Boris Tadic, favor joining the European Union despite its support for an independent Kosovo.
Hard-line nationalist parties, like that of Kostunica, adamantly reject ties to the EU on those terms. Kostunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia and the larger, ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party insist that negotiations with the EU must involve an “intact” Serbia that contains Kosovo. The Radicals appear willing to sacrifice EU rapprochement over the Kosovo issue.
Kostunica and his supporters have repeatedly clashed with Tadic and his allies in parliamentary votes involving the EU. The uncertainty has deepened Serbia’s economic crisis, with the stock market last week plunging to its lowest level in more than a year.
Tadic, head of the reform-minded Democratic Party, on Feb. 3 narrowly defeated the Radicals’ candidate for the Serbian presidency in an election seen as a referendum on the country’s membership in the EU. The vote showed that most Serbs want to be part of Europe. However, the Radicals remain extremely powerful; they are the largest party in parliament, with 81 of 250 seats.
“All parties in Serbia, with no exception, want Serbia to join the EU, but the difference is: with Kosovo or without it?” Kostunica said. “This is the essential question, and that is why the government has split. . . . There was no united will to clearly and openly say that Serbia can continue its path to the EU only with Kosovo.”
In a statement, Tadic agreed to call early elections as the best way to overcome the political crisis that has seized the nation.
But he said he believed that the dispute went beyond Kosovo.
“I believe the issue is that the Serbian government does not have a united position over European and economic perspectives of Serbia and its citizens,” Tadic said.
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Special correspondent Cirjakovic reported from Belgrade and Times staff writer Wilkinson from Madrid.
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