People who don’t vote aren’t represented
Serbia today reportedly sought annulment of the November 3 municipal election in all of northern Kosovo. That did not happen. In a meeting of Prime Ministers Dacic and Thaci with EU mediator Katherine Ashton today, it was confirmed that polling will be repeated only in the three polling places in north Mitrovica where ballots were destroyed, as decided by the Kosovo electoral commission.
Low turnout in the other municipalities and early closure of the polls due to intimidation were not good reasons to repeat the election elsewhere. That would only have encouraged a repetition of the successful violent attack the first time around. Low turnout does not invalidate democratic elections.
Prime Minister Dacic is warning that if Serbs don’t come out to vote at the rerun they could end up with an Albanian mayor. That’s not a line calculated to promote reconciliation, but he has a point. People who don’t vote aren’t represented.
A decent do-over December 1 in north Mitrovica at the three most affected pollling stations will likely be enough to get Serbia a date to open accession negotiations. That decision will be made later in December, but the date for accession talks may be well into 2014. Brussels is in no rush, and it will want to be certain that Belgrade is doing everything it can to crack down on the miscreants who ruined what otherwise might have been an okay election day.
Pristina is coming out of this election day with a point or two in its favor, so far. It could not be held responsible for the attack on the polling stations, or even the failure of the police force, still only nominally under its command, to respond quickly and effectively. Low turnout likely favored the more moderate candidates among the Serbs and even non-Serbs. It will be four years before any distortions in the three northernmost municipalities can be corrected. That gives time and space for the kind of generous approach to integration, already used successfully south of the Ibar river, that is called for.
Props to the EU for helping to settle this mess quickly, and to the Kosovo electoral commission for a wise decision.
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9 thoughts on “People who don’t vote aren’t represented”
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What about some props for the Serbian PM, who is soberly urging the people of North Mitrovica to come out for the re-vote and take advantage of what rights they do have, in the best interests of themselves and of Serbia? As the public – as represented by the posters at B92 – is reminding everyone, this is exactly counter to what he has been calling on Serbs in Kosovo to do for years now, but as he says, you can’t expect 7 million Serbs in Serbia to sacrifice themselves for the 20,000 Serbs of North Mitrovica. Vucic was called in at the end of the meeting in Brussels, apparently only to be given the result rather than consulted on it, but he has shown signs of pragmatism lately, in any case. Unwilling pragmatism, since he urged Serbs to vote only to make it possible to avoid as much as possible dealing with Prishtina, rather than to view is as their new capital, as the Croatians have done with ethnic-Croatians in BiH, but still better than nothing. And the EU obviously awards points for “better than nothing.”
Yes, “People who don’t vote aren’t represented,” but on the other hand, when the people who get elected don’t represent the communities over whom they preside, and where the issues at stake are national (what state are we going to belong to?) rather than local (how many garbage collections per week?) that’s a serious matter. Even granted all the thuggery and gangsterism, it stands to reason that the vast majority of Serbs in the north (probably in the south too, but they have no choice) really and truly hate the idea of belonging to an Albanian-dominated state of Kosovo, and that it wasn’t intimidation that caused them (mistakenly, in my opinion) not to come out and vote. In future they probably won’t be saying to themselves “Yes Mr. Serwer’s right, we haven’t voted so we have to go along with whatever our local officials dish out, and it’s okay for them to act in our communities as agents of a state that we despise and fear.” More likely there will be more or less vigorous resistance, and it will be met with more or less vigorous coercion that Mr. Serwer will find to be a lawful though regrettable necessity for the construction of the Kosovan multiethnic democracy.
The end result is likely to be that as usual in cases where a national minority is compelled to become part of a state that it doesn’t want to belong to–and assuming there’s no “quite voluntary” mass departure–the northern Serb communities will end up as both a bone in the throat and a whipping boy to the national majority. Look at the Presevo Albanians, who are institutionally “integrated” into Serbia while making no secret of their natural dislike and contempt for that country. Or look at Amer’s “ethnic” Croats in BiH, whose disavowal by Croatia (which has got a bit less decided since Croatia made it into the EU) hasn’t exactly led to harmony between them and the Bosniak majority. Or look at the Jerusalem Palestinians, who also don’t vote and therefore aren’t represented, yet whose treatment by the city government is widely regarded as not being their fault, but rather as discreditable to Israel.
In the given situation, the least bad outcome of the elections would be for whoever is elected not to treat the majority in the northern communities as self-disenfranchised, but to act as, so to speak, “appointed” intermediaries between the community majorities on the one hand, and Pristina and Belgrade on the other. Whether anyone–the election winners, the majorities, Pristina, Belgrade, or for that matter the Quint–will let that happen remains to be seen.
While the “vast majority” of Serbs in Kosovo may hate the idea of living in an Albanian-majority Kosovo, the number of potential resisters is falling by the day, at least in the words of Serbian politicians. (Dacic yesterday was talking of only 10,000 as the number for whom the citizens of Serbia were being asked to sacrifice themselves.) Kosovar Serbs may despise and fear the state of Kosovo, but much of that is due to simple lack of knowledge. When focus groups were run (by an internationally sponsored NGO, was it?) in the North, it turned out the majority simply had no idea what the Ahtisaari plan offered – they had been sure, for example, they would be forced to learn Albanian. Where not based on misinformation, the resistance is emotional, not intellectual, for those not financially affected by the change in boundaries. A “more or less vigorous resistance” unsupported by the country across the border is not likely to maintain itself for long in the absence of direct Albanian provocation, and from the experience of the Serbian communities in the South it seems that this will be minor at best and not supported by the government in any case.
Some of the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo may have despised living in a Serb-dominated country, and those living in Serbia now have their complaints, but most of these were and are about specific actions and conditions – the lack of recognition of university diplomas from Albanian-language institutions abroad that made graduates ineligible for government jobs, the failure to provide Albanian-language textbooks for the local schools, heavy-handed policing, for example. The Serbs, on the other hand, seem to be afflicted with what used to be an unembarrassed racism – for example, the media until only recently used to make matter-of-fact references to an animal-like Albanian birthrate, an assumed association with crime (especially the firmly believed-in use by the other community of sexual violence against one’s own community), contempt for an assumed low level of intelligence and education. These are all too familiar to an American who remembers, if dimly, the 1950s and 60s in the U.S., and recognizes the disguised form such attitudes appear in even today, especially in certain parts of the country. Even though the history of the U.S. shows just how long it can take, attitudes can be changed, even when a population has scared itself into intolerance. There is no inherent reason that Serbs cannot learn to live in an Albanian-majority country, but it will call for restraint both sides. Fortunately, unlike in the U.S., there are identifiable rewards for progress in changing attitudes in Kosovo. Progress might have been faster in the U.S. if we had desperately needed to meet EU requirements for tolerance.
Increased self-governance and the lack of external support for resistance, moral and financial, together with a lack of provocation by the majority community could very well be enough to make the process smoother and faster than we’ve seen in my own country. It’s something to hope for, at least. Sentimental nationalists may always regret the loss of Kosovo after taking it back from the Turks 100 years ago, but sentimentality is no basis for national policy and certainly won’t insure decent life for one’s citizens.
Amer very good analysis and I hope things work for both serbia and kosovo,but why not the partition of the north to serbia and presevo and western bujanovac (Albanian dominated area)to kosovo?i understand about possible chain reaction throughout the Balkans(fyrom,Montenegro,Bosnia)however I think this would be mutual acceptable solution to both serbia and kosovo.Unlike the other countries mentioned.and we won’t need to wait for decades for both countries to be at ease with one another.
I’m not objecting, but I can’t remember the Serbs ever saying anything serious about a trade – as I remember it, they just want the Serb-settled parts of Kosovo back.
The border was changed, back in the 1950’s (I think – I can’t put my hands on the reference right now) to produce the present situation. Reverting to the previous borders might be acceptable to both sides if relations between them were better.
The internationals don’t like the idea because of feared effects on other areas in the Balkans, where people are understandably nervous about potential conflicts over border areas turning violent. On the other hand, if Serbia were to recognize Kosovo in its present borders as an independent state, there shouldn’t be any international objections to a peaceful adjustment of the border between them at some point. Even in settled Europe there are movements toward breaking up long-standing unions, and the rural counties of Colorado just Tuesday voted on seceding from the snobbish urban counties to form the 51st state. (It didn’t pass.) The Powers That Be in the larger unit automatically resist loss of real estate and tax revenues, but God didn’t draw the world’s current borders, and everything is therefore theoretically open to revision. Maybe someday Massachusetts will even get Maine back and become the leader of the region?
I can’t exactly remember either, but it seems to me that at some point someone in Belgrade die indeed have the brilliant idea of adding Serb-settled land to Kosovo, presumably the places north of the Ibar, to beef up the number of Serbs in the province. If only someone else in Belgrade had quashed that idea . . . That makes the northern Serbs all the more playthings of distant power wielders. So long as the distant power wielders call the tune, however, I doubt if recognition plus land swap will be even discussable.
I think that Amer and I agree that this is a matter of compelling a community into going where it doesn’t want to go; his scenario of resistance quickly fading because unsupported by Serbia, and of the Serbs “learning to live” in an Albanian-majority country suggests that he too sees it that way. His wording also suggests that he no more than I expects Serbs in Kosovo ever to be waving blue-and-yellow flags or setting up statues of Bill Clinton, though it sounds from time to time as if that’s what he thinks they should be doing.
Where we differ is partly in our assessment of the moral status of such compulsion. Amer sees Serb reluctance to be part of Kosovo as the result of intolerant racism, or at best as “emotional” rather than “intellectual,” and hence the effort to overcome this reluctance as being on the same moral level as the U.S. civil rights struggle. Without denying the reality of a century of (mostly) Serb oppression and domination in Kosovo and contempt for the “Škiptari,” I take it for granted that every identification with a particular nation is of its nature an emotion, and all the more powerful and permanent and inherently legitimate exactly because of that. It seems to me, furthermore, that the effort to overcome this emotion in northern Kosovo doesn’t have its origin in a struggle for justice, but in the realpolitik calculations of the Western cabinets that with the secession of Kosovo in its existing borders, Balkan national self-determination has gone quite far enough.
We also differ in our assessment of how beneficent and peaceful the process of compulsion is likely to be. I can’t agree that no significant harassment of Serbs is going on south of the Ibar, so that it’s just the Serbs north of the Ibar, blinded by racist prejudice, who are “scaring themselves into intolerance.” That’s not what we’ve been hearing, to take one example, from Amnesty. For that reason I can very well imagine that unrepresentative local officials in the north may either initiate or acquiesce in provocative actions initiated from the south that can ultimately lead to a cycle of resistance and repression, and thence to a fight-or-flight situation.
For that matter, imagine a Serb living north of the Ibar, and reading remarks such as have appeared on this influential U.S. website about voluntary Serb departure, or contemplating massive Albanian returns north with no mention of Serb returns south, or about Serb expellees being foreigners in Kosovo who shouldn’t be allowed to vote, or to the effect that the failure to find culprits in the Podujevo bombings is something to be just sucked up. Wouldn’t such a Serb be bound to wonder how all this squares with all the talk on the same website of Kosovan multiethnic democracy, and wouldn’t he or she be plenty scared?
I do agree that some kind of undestructive solution, with the northern Serbs part of Kosovo, “is something to hope for, at least.” But I also think that the immediate problem for Serbs is and has to be one of preserving their existence and identity in an inhospitable environment, which would also give the best hope of mutual disarmament, one day, between them and the Albanians. The Serbs’ best chance of doing so, it seems to me, would have been to turn out in large numbers and vote for the Belgrade candidates. And I’m afraid that by not doing so, they’ve laid themselves open to a historic injustice that may not be as blatant, or have such long-term devastating results, as the failure to give most of Kosovo to Albania and the rest to Serbia back in 1913, but will be a tragedy all the same.
I’m willing to grant you, Gavin, that the Serbs of the North are experiencing their assignment to Kosovo rather than to Serbia as a tragedy and that this is being forced on them for pragmatic reasons by outsiders rather than as an effort to ensure something called justice. But, to be blunt about it, justice has not been the criterion in determining most of the world’s borders in the past, as you recognize in referring to the London Conference. Even the well-meant granting of their own states to the peoples of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I ended up with the formation of a multitude of states too weak to defend themselves, despite the frantic alliance-building of the between-war years. The point is that we as human beings may simply not be wise enough to determine what justice is and that preserving the peace for as long a period as possible is the best we can hope for.
Even the UN does not guarantee support for the political independence or self-determined attachment to another country to every group desiring it, all in the interest of preserving the larger peace. What it does call for is recognition of the human rights of individuals and of cultural groups. With the polka-dot distribution pattern of ethnic groups within the Balkans (the result of “colonizing” efforts by various governments going back to the Middle Ages), there’s really no alternative there. The Serbs of northern Kosovo would find this easier to accept if it were not for the Yugoslav contrast of the “nations” with broad powers and and “nationalities” – minorities, members of ethnic groups with more limited rights . “Minority” ended up almost as a pejorative term – as in one Serb’s comment to an Albanian shortly after the declaration of independence – that “within Serbia, the Albanians are just a minority, and they’d better get used to behaving like one.” It’s easy to understand Serbian apprehensions about becoming a “minority” in the place where they had once been the dominant group.
The Serbs proved unwilling to allow the Albanians of Kosovo their human or civil rights, thereby voiding in my view any right to control over them. The Albanians now may not be behaving perfectly in Kosovo, but the difference is that there are laws against the harassment and strong encouragement by the holders of the sticks and carrots to enforce them. While the spirit of unity and brotherhood may never flourish in Kosovo, especially if the communities maintain separate education systems, a decent life should be available to all. Nationalism was a poisonous product of a certain period of European history, and it would be best for all if it ceased to play a decisive role in political decision-making in the future.
We seem to be pretty much on the same wavelength, Amer! You’re absolutely right that when it come to drawing borders between nations, it’s inevitable that stuff happens. I just think that the northern Serbs ending up on the wrong side is an example of stuff, not a victory for an ideal of multiethnicity. I don’t see it as a tragedy–the tragedy I had in mind is a fight-or-flight situation, and while I hope your confidence in the guarantees against it is justified, I’m not so sure of that, or that if it does happen it will be mainly the fault of the Serbs. After all, there’s a fair amount of evidence of Albanian oppression of Serbs in Kosovo when they had the chance. Still, there’s no question that Serbia was by far the main oppressor, and I don’t quarrel with that as a justification for the independence of (most of) Kosovo. Pity that a similar and even worse situation didn’t lead to the slicing off of the Serb-inhabited territories of Croatia after WWII. In that case, no Vukovar, no Operation Storm.