Who is Ivica Dačić?

Milan Marinkovic writes from Niš:

Perhaps Serbia still does not know who is going to be its next president, but I think it knows very well who will be the prime minister

said Serbian incumbent interior minister and the leader of the Socialist party (SPS) Ivica Dačić at his first press conference after preliminary results of Serbian parliamentary elections were announced.  He has even hinted he might also keep the powerful interior ministry portfolio while also taking the prime ministry.

While it came in third, the number of seats SPS has won in Parliament makes Dačić the kingmaker in postelection negotiations over the formation of the next government. Unless the two bigger parties – Democrats (DS) of President Boris Tadić and Progressives (SNS) of Tomislav Nikolić – decide to join forces despite their bitter rivalry, SPS cannot be avoided in any combination that reaches a majority in Parliament. That’s why Dačić is so confident.

According to the latest news, the puzzle seems to be already solved. Officials from Tadić’s DS and Dačić’s SPS told the media that they have reached agreement.  Tadić, who faces a presidential runoff May 20, enigmatically confirmed that he knew who would be the next prime minister, refusing to reveal the name.

Increasing Dačić’s prospects of assuming the post is the fact that Boris Tadić needs his support if he is to defeat Tomislav Nikolić in the second round of the presidential race. What remains unknown is which party will be the third coalition partner. The potential candidates are the United Regions of Serbia (URS), which participated in the outgoing government, and the opposition Liberal democratic party (LDP). If Dačić is going to have the final word, he will probably opt for URS.

Even if Dačić fails in his aspiration to the premiership, he has every reason to celebrate. Since the previous election four years ago he has managed to become the second most influential politician in the country, having doubled both his own and the party’s popularity. The two stronger parties – DS and SNS – won higher percentages of votes than SPS but came in well below their own – and most analysts’ – expectations. Ivica Dačić thus appears to be the one who best understands what the average voter wants to hear.

What could the policy of a government he heads look like?

In a recent statement, Dačić said he would remain committed to the process of European integration but stressed that he was not going to accept any foreign ultimatums, no matter if they come from Brussels, Washington or Moscow. “I only listen to Serbian people,” Dačić concluded.

When it comes to Kosovo, Dačić will prove assertive, as he continues to insist that partition would be the best solution, disregarding potentially adverse consequences of such an idea and international opposition to it. But Dačić is a prudent pragmatist who knows his (and his country’s) limits, so it is unlikely he would dare to cross the line and seize the northern part of Kosovo.  He is just as unlikely to agree to put it under Pristina’s sovereignty.

Probably the same pragmatism will moderate his behavior towards Bosnia.  Dačić often makes provocative remarks suggesting independence for its Serb-controlled half, Republika Srpska.  The situation in Bosnia is troublesome enough even without  sniping from Belgrade.

Altogether, the way Serbia has so far dealt with the these issues should not be expected to undergo any notable shifts, at least in the short term. Apart from Dačić’s contentious rheoric, the country’s foreign policy will basically remain as ambigous as it already is.

Currently more challenging for Serbian government is the question of what it intends to do in the coming months to solve the problems it is facing at home. Prominent economists are warning that Serbia, among other things, must urgently undertake a stringent fiscal reform with emphasis on budget cuts if it wants to escape the Greek scenario. The incumbent government has been delaying reform for fear of popular unrest.  The likely composition of the incoming government suggests that procrastination will persist.  But there is a catch-22: the existing state of the economy is such that popular unrest could prove inevitable anyway

The failure to reform the security sector has contributed to the failure of reforms in other areas, since many factions within the apparatus that served as the backbone of Slobodan Milošević’s regime have never been disbanded. Once an important figure of Milošević’s inner circle, Ivica Dačić could be an ideal person to carry out security sector reform, but his electoral constituency is rooted partly in the security services.  It might well be in his interest that the old guard in security services remains intact.  His inclination as interior minister has been more in the direction of centralization than serious reform.

Reports are now emerging from a Hungarian party in Vojvodina (an autonomous province in northern Serbia) and from Nikolic about election irregularities.  This is the first time since the fall of Milošević that serious accusations of election theft have been lodged.  It will be interesting to see how they are resolved.