Third place counts

Milan Marinković weighs in from Niš on the upcoming elections in Serbia:

Both presidential and parliamentary elections in Serbia are scheduled for May 6 and the campaign is well under way.  An abundance of unrealistic promises and the absence of concrete ideas dominate most actors’ pre-electoral rhetoric.

The campaign is basically negative. The point is not to convince voters of the candidate’s quality or ability, but to portray a rival as an even bigger evil. This tactic is most notably being used by President Boris Tadić and his Democratic Party (DS) against their major opponents – Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and its leader Tomislav Nikolić.

A key difference from the previous campaigns is that neither Kosovo nor the EU is a focal point. This time the emphasis is on economic issues, with much demagoguery about job creation and the need for more social justice. Tomislav Nikolić and his SNS are looking to take advantage of massive dissapointment in the current government’s poor results in economic policy. President Tadić, for his part, still can rely on favoritism from the influential mainstream media, controlled by his closest aides.

Opinion polls show that Tadić is more popular than his party. A primary reason he decided to hold presidential elections concurrently with those for Parliament is to improve the party’s prospects in the race.

While DS and SNS, as two biggest parties, will compete for the single highest percentage of votes, the actual winner of the elections will be the smaller one that finishes third. The logic is simple:  unless Tadić and Nikolić decide to ally with each other, no government can be formed without support from the third.

This postelection prospect puts the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) of Interior Minister Ivica Dačić in an ideal position. As an experienced politician and the indispensable coalition partner in the current government to Boris Tadić, Dačić has prudently utilized four years in office to significantly increase his and his party’s popularity.

Many analysts estimate that Dačić is going to demand the premiership in exchange for participation of his party in the next government. The composition of the future ruling coalition largely depends on which of the two big parties’ leaderships will be more willing to acquiesce to Dačić’s growing political ambitions.

A potential problem for Boris Tadić is that SPS alone might no longer remain a sufficient coalition partner should SNS defeat his party in the parliamentary elections by too large a margin. Such an outcome would force Tadić to find an additional ally. The Liberal-democratic party (LDP) seems most likely to fill the void. A government that includes LDP would be expected to be more dedicated to the Eurointegration process and the accomplishment of necessary systemic reforms, given the party’s indisputably pro-Western orientation.

For SNS, the party of Tadić’s main rival Tomislav Nikolić, victory in the parliamentary elections is almost assured. But a victory does not guarantee that the party will be able to form the government. More important for SNS is how convincing that victory is going to be. The more seats in Parliament SNS manages to secure, the fewer small parties’ appetites it will need to satisfy during possible postelection negotiations. As in the case of a government led by DS, Dačić’s SPS would presumably remain an inevitable coalition member.

The least probable outcome, albeit possible, is that Nikolić’s SNS and Tadić’s DS create the so-called “big coalition.” This might happen if smaller parties demand too much in the bargaining over coalition formation.

The big coalition would be at the same time a big unknown. While optimists believe that an overwhelming parliamentary majority such a government would enjoy could facilitate the resolution of many pressing issues, pessimists fear that concentration of so much power in the hands of two strongest parties will only further undermine the already fragile democracy in Serbia.  Both may well prove right.