11 May 2008 Parliamentary Elections in Serbia. And the winner is...well SPS Dacic will decide.

Looking at the plain results cited below it is obvious that the politically immortal 1990's chief hate monger Vuk Draskovic is back, that DS and G17 are the gainers and DSS the loser while the rest took their old gains.

However, I find something very funny. Boring Radicals, Kustinicas' blood sucking DSS, and Molosevic’s SPS won 127 seats, a majority, two seats over the simple 125 majority of 250 seats, and yet DS leadership is talking about some kind of pro EU victory and encouraging people to go out to and occupy streets in celebration. Yes, as my friend C. put it: "They missed a chance to capitalize on Kosovo departure so if now SRS do not form the government in four years time will be safely on our EU road away from Kosovo".

While this true the numbers are quite grim and show no change in Serbian electorate regarding the sharp cleavage over the issue of Western international integrations.

Jan 2007 May 2008 Change

% seats % seats % seats

Radicals 28,7 81 28.5 77 0 -4

Democrats 22,9 65 39/103 (coalition w/G17,SPO,LSV) cca +8 to10

G17 19 25 +6

SPO 0 ? ?

LSV 3? 3? 0

DSS/NS 47 30 -17

JS 2 +2

PUPS 2 +2

SPS 16 16 (+4) 0

LDP 15 13 -2

HUN 3 4/5 +1/2

ROM 1+1 ? ?
SDA 2 2 0

ALB 1 1 0

*final results may change these for +/-1 seat

So when DS say Serbia chose Europe that means "we made a deal to buy support from Milosevic's SPS". While not pretending to be a puritan here we are talking about the exactly same SPS as the one that ruled during the 1990's. I guess that this kind of political pragmatism and wisdom will find fully fertile ground in Serbia only once us who vividly remembers 1990's are still around.

On top of this Tadic is so open about him taking Serbia into EU with Kosovo only (!) that he not only scares me but also insults my libertarian feelings in terms of him saying that 2 milion Kosovo Albanians should give in to 120k remaining die hard Serbs or that they are idiots and will come back under the Tadic coat as soon as he forms the government. The little happiness around as found by that bunch remains to be DS target perpetuating as LDP would say "politics of territories and not of people for people". Any debate on this topic would be unaccaptable beyond silly and thus Tadic stand is plain crazy! Even be it for PR purposes as many are trying to explain it.

Back to SPS, I mean…one thing is if some Belgrade treasury money loaded DS yuppies already bought our SPS support with few public companies board seats here and few there, another one is that Serbia is yet to gain critical majority for reforms and EU integrations.

The two leaders, Nikolic and Tadic, essentially failed to move the old boundaries and thus achieved no success, both of them should account for these lack of gains to their parties, and yet none of the two will. Certainly Tadic who steadily grew into a small Putin by killing all there was of the internal DS democracy and melting the Presidency of the Republic into the DS leadership. Not sure which of the two makes me more disillusioned. Probably the combining unfortunate result that effectively will prevent DS from becoming a serious vehicle on any genuine reforms road, a hallucinating hope by a part of DS voters that have no direct personal interest out of the DS corrupt and irresponsible Belgrade or national governance.

If anything, this elections are spitting image of the one from Jan 08 with a 5 seats less for the Radicals and as many more for DS. The rest is the same. Only naïve and overly hopeful will let be confused by sudden coalitions and some achieved synergies. Also, to mention, it is shame that LDO couldn't pull more than 5 nationally and 7 % in Belgrade. This is also a call for Ceda to reconsider his so far autocratic leadership style and decide if he'll let LDP outgrow him some time in the future or does it have to stay his own private ring. It seems that only that when this takes place and when painfully hermeneutic in their views Ceda's colegues get the idea of the movement expansion, more present unhappy DS supporters will turn to them.

At the end of the day, the numbers are irreversible and painfully rigid. Will see who exactly will buy whom and who'll form the government, one idiotic rumor from very close DS had it previous days that little Jugopetrol boy turned Hardvardian wonder foreign minister Jeremic himself will become the Medvedev, pard me, Serbian PM. One thing is for sure though, albeit ticking the stupid eurocratic boxes Serbian is nowhere nearer EU or for that matter economic reforms or much needed political cleansing in the form of consensus about its European future.