Mosaiko

Serbian Autumn” Delayed: A Lesson in Uncivil Democracy-Building

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Autumn is often a risky time of the year for Serbian leaders. Faced with a bitterly cold Balkan winter and frustrated by personal and economic hardships, Serbs tend to look for change. In the last days of September 1987, Slobodan Milosevic ousted his longtime mentor Ivan Stambolic and changed the course of Balkan history. Mindful of autumn frustrations and spring hopes building during his decade-long rule, Milosevic customarily called elections in the dead of winter, when harsh weather might preempt some opposition outrage. He ultimately did lose an election, but not through the work of Western-funded nongovernmental organizations or independent trade unions, which played marginal roles. Instead, Milosevic’s chief nemesis was an unlikely coalition of seasoned politicians and a grassroots students’ movement.

It was a huge surprise when Milosevic called elections for September 24, 2000 — in autumn, not winter. The outcome was not in Milosevic’s favor. Milosevic attempted to manipulate the election’s results by trying to coerce the Serbian electoral commission and the Supreme Court into calling the second round instead of declaring Vojislav Kostunica the new president after the first round. His attempts to alter its results led to a series of mass protests and strikes throughout Serbia, even in places that had been considered Milosevic’s strongholds. Main streets were blocked in most big cities, garbage was not collected for days and opposition supporters organized daily protest walks. The unrest paralyzed most of the country and culminated in what is often referred to as the “October 5 Overthrow” or simply “The Revolution.” Two lessons emerged from these events. One is that elections, even when they are neither free nor fair, can be dangerous for autocrats. Another is that “established” civil society organizations are not always the best catalysts for overturning autocratic rule.

Instead, the unlikely key player in the odd cast of characters and groups who secured the longed-for change was Kostunica, the man who defeated Milosevic at the September polls. Strongly nationalist like Milosevic, he appealed to Serb voters disgusted by Milosevic’s failures. Kostunica had not adopted Western values and ideas. The soft-spoken, lackluster Kostunica drew little attention from Milosevic’s vicious propaganda machine.

The incumbent’s efforts instead were trained on Zoran Djindjic, the regime’s most formidable opponent and Kostunica’s rival turned reluctant partner. State-run media had so successfully demonized Djindjic that he stood no chance at the polls. Djindjic was neither ruthless nor irresponsible. He was courageous, Machiavellian, pragmatic possibly to a fault, and ready always to cut corners and make deals. Those traits made him indispensable during those autumn days, when the future of Serbia hung in the balance.

Instrumental for the success of the revolution was Otpor, a grassroots students’ movement that overnight became Milosevic’s adversary. Otpor benefited from the advice of retired U.S. Army Colonel Robert Helvey and generous funding from the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy. Otpor was not a typical NGO, but a fast-growing students’ movement with a collective, highly decentralized leadership, which made it more effective than the typical, Western-funded Serbian NGO. Equally important, infinitely more surprising — and less funded — were the coal miners of Lazarevac, a small town south of Belgrade. Once loyal to the regime, their strike was the first sign that Milosevic’s government would not survive the election, tampered results or not.

I realized that Milosevic was “finished” on October 5, as chanting protesters gathered in the early morning in Belgrade. I saw groups of football fans joining the crowd at the huge square in front of the Yugoslav parliament. Milosevic had deftly channeled the destructive energy and zeal of these “football hooligans” into paramilitary units for almost a decade. Now they finally turned against him. The most fervent fans were those who crashed police lines and turned the tide during the brief eruption of violence that saw both the parliament and state television burning.

This uncivil end of Milosevic’s decidedly uncivil rule is a sobering testament to the failure of civil society and the deficiencies, at least in the Serbian context, of trying to build democracy by channeling aid through NGOs. Instead, many citizens have grown suspicious of those organizations whose support of reform has too often been either tepid or counterproductive. To this day, many Serbian NGOs are run by a single leader more occupied with securing and retaining Western sponsorship than with addressing complicated and often unpleasant political realities in a land where progress sometimes depends upon disagreeable political bargains. Without the “uncivil” compromises and unsavory alliances, we would still be waiting for the “Serbian Autumn.”