Serbia’s musical chairs

Tomorrow peacefare will publish a piece on international implications of the Serbian elections.  Today Milan Marinković writes from Niš: 

Serbia elected a new president last weekend:  Tomislav Nikolić, the leader of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). Nikolić defeated incumbent Boris Tadić of the Democratic Party (DS) in the second-round runoff of the presidential race.  This comes on top of a parliamentary election in which SNS won the largest number of seats.  The time is coming to form a governing coalition with a majority of votes in parliament.

Nikolić’s victory strengthens Socialist Party leader Ivica Dačić as the kingmaker in postelection negotiations. He is the essential ingredient in either an SNS or a DS dominated coalition.  In a statement following Nikolić’s election, Dačić said that his party’s pre-electoral agreement with DS basically remained in place, but the situation had now become more complex.

Dačić already proved to be an unreliable partner in 2008, when he was also the kingmaker following the parliamentary elections that year. Shortly after Daćić announced that his party had come to terms with the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) and Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), he suddenly jumped ship, defecting to Tadić (DS).

In line with his proven pragmatism, Dačić is now keeping his options open. He knows that Nikolić as president is entitled to offer the mandate to the party of his own chosing.  SNS will be Nikolić’s logical first choice not only because it is his party, but also because it won the largest single portion of the parliamentary seats.

Serbia’s constitution strictly limits the authority of president . His predecessor managed to hold a far greater share of power than the constitution allows due to the fact that his party was the core member of the ruling coalition. Incumbent prime minister Mirko Cvetković was just a figurehead.  Tadić ran the government .

The only way for Nikolić to attain substantial power is to make his party a member of the next government. Otherwise, he will be as weak a president as Mr. Cvetković was a prime minister under Tadić. Nikolić therefore needs to give Dačić an exceptionally attractive offer to lure him away from the coalition with Tadić and DS. And Tadić – or whoever might replace him as the party’s next leader – will then have to offer even more to Dačić in order for DS to stay in power.

Only a grand coalition between Nikolić’s SNS and Tadić’s DS would leave Dačić out in the cold, but that’s a solution Nikolić presumably wants to avoid. Most of the people who voted for Nikolić did so out of their animosity to Tadić. If Nikolić were to ally with his fiercest rival, his voters would no doubt feel betrayed. After nearly a decade of unsuccessful attempts to defeat Tadić in one presidential race after another, Nikolić is unlikely to risk losing the popular support he has finally won in his fourth try, especially given the small margin of his victory.

A less irksome option for Nikolić would be the so-called “cohabitation” with a government in which his party does not participate – i.e. one that involves Tadić’s DS and Dačić’s (inescapable) SPS. That would help Nikolić portray himself as a responsible politician who puts the interest of his country before everything else – including his own and his party’s interests – serving as a “corrective factor” that supervises the government’s actions. Nikolić would thus be able to cooperate with a government that involves Tadić’s party, but without direct participation in an alliance with his main political opponent – something his voters probably could swallow.

If Nikolić wants to avoid cohabitation at all costs, his party and SPS will still need a third coalition partner. The Democratic party of Serbia (DSS), led by a former prime minister Vojislav Koštunica, seems most likely to join in.  DSS publicly supported Nikolić prior to his runoff with Boris Tadić.

Such a government could put the European integration of Serbia at serious risk. DSS is irreconcilably anti-EU and openly pro-Russian. It is unclear what Nikolić could do to persuade Koštunica and his party to soften their stance against the EU.  SNS itself  maintains strong relations with Moscow, recently  formalized in a cooperation agreement with Vladimir Putin’s United Russia.  Some Serbian observers even suspect that SNS is a “Trojan horse” that has infiltrated Serbia’s pro-EU camp on behalf of the Kremlin.

According to opinion polls, Nikolić’s supporters oppose Serbia’s potential membership in the EU despite his official pro-EU position. Nikolić and Dačić share the dark nationalist past of 1990s and have adopted the European agenda only recently.  They both have yet to prove their newfound commitment.

A “nationalist” government composed of SNS, SPS and DSS might most coherently reflect the election results.  Most SPS voters also prefer Nikolić to Tadić, even though Dačić called on them to vote for the latter.  But cohabitation, with DS leading the government but Nikolic in the presidency, would be preferable from a regional and international perspective, which sees risks in a return to a strongly nationalist Serbia.

An additional complication would occur if the SPS were unable to hold the allegiance of its other two electoral coalition members.   That would greatly increase the number of arithmetic possibilities for achieving a parliamentary majority.

Dačić of late has begun to play down his ambition of becoming prime minister, which may suggest that he has realized it would be advisable to avoid the hot seat at a time when a number of unpopular steps will have to be taken and instead patiently wait for a next – more opportune – occasion.

Serbia’s game of musical chairs has begun.  Who will be left out when the music stops?