The Cedar Lounge Revolution

I’m sorry, my first response on reading the following was to laugh. For one reads in the Irish Times today (and for shame the Guardian that it didn’t carry the news despite having a “Serbia” section on its website) that…Serbian Socialists agree alliance with Democrats to form pro-EU coalition.

Serbia’s Socialist Party has agreed to join an alliance headed by the Democrats to form a pro-European coalition government, its leader, Ivica Dacic, announced yesterday.

Although details on the coalition deal and final division of posts and functions in the cabinet have yet to be agreed, the move signals the formation of a government that will aim to speed up Serbia’s European Union membership bid after years of halting progress.

Now let’s think this one through, because some may be aware that the Socialist Party was part of the opposition, yes, that’s right. And those with longer memories will recall that a certain person, agh, what’s his name? Milosevic, that’s it, Slobodan Milošević, founded it in 1990. And that the Democrats ousted the SSP in 2000 after Milošević was given his marching orders.

And, as Splintered Sunrise suggested this outcome, well, these unlikely allies were, in part, thrown together by the truism that power has its own inexorable logic.

What a deal too. As the BBC reported…

Details have not yet been released but reports say the Socialists will get the post of parliamentary speaker and two top ministries – police and capital expenditure – despite having won only 12 seats in the 250-seat parliament in May.

I thought it was 20 seats, but perhaps not. Still, the Police? Hmmm…

Moreover, what of…

…the Socialists’ earlier agreement to join President Tadic’s rivals – the outgoing prime minister Vojislav Kostunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia and the ultra-nationalist Radical Party – in power in Belgrade city council.

President Tadic said on Sunday that his three-party coalition and the Socialists had buried past differences and were in talks for a new government which could be formed “very soon”.

And they’re some ‘past differences’…

But the Socialist Party, which is responsible for the country’s international isolation under Milosevic, has reinvented itself as an advocate of social justice and attracts many young, often poor or unemployed voters.

That might be an unfair characterisation as regards the SSP being ‘responsible for…’ but clearly it has a most interesting history. Which makes the response from Brussels, as reported by Reuters near-amusing.

The European Union on Tuesday hailed an agreement between Serbia’s Socialist and Democratic parties as a real chance to establish a pro-European government in the Balkan country.
…

EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said he was awaiting a formal announcement by President Boris Tadic but hoped a government could be formed this week.

“There is a real chance Serbia will now have a truly pro-European government and I am very much looking forward to working with that government,” Rehn told reporters during a conference on the Balkans in Brussels.

“Of course we have been for long looking forward to seeing a reform-orientated government in Serbia,” he said, adding that this was important for Serbia’s chances of joining the EU.

Irony piled upon irony. The European Union greets, with open arms, this ‘truly pro-European government’... That said, this probably isn’t the worst news that could come from Belgrade and there is no reason why the SSP shouldn’t work well within a coalition context. I suspect that however vestigial their left nationalism there’s no harm in them keeping an eye on the Tadić, the EU’s blue eyed boy. Does this seem an unfeasible alliance? Well, yes and no. For scratch any ‘democratic socialist’ or ‘left nationalist’ and you’ll more than likely find a pragmatist to some degree or another. And in fairness, the DP is nominally left-wing, whereas the SRP and the Democratic Party are more clearly populist centre/centre right. So perhaps a better fit for the SSP.

Still, it’s not all plain sailing from here…

While the Socialists have refused to recognise the legitimacy of the UN court, the Democrats have pledged to fulfil an EU demand to catch wartime Bosnian Serb leader Mr Karadzic, his military henchman Mr Mladic, and the former chief of a breakaway Croatian-Serb region, Goran Hadzic.

But these are, as the saying goes, mere details…

I know I’m always saying this but one feels for Kostunica, a much better man than he is painted in some quarters. He must wonder about the way events have turned out and at how yesterday’s pariah’s are now the new Europeans. Now there’s a fascinating example of how Europe works its particular magic. Mind you, not only him, for there was some sentiment abroad during the late 1990s that Serbia under Milošević and the SSP represented some sort of hold-out against the West. Which perhaps points to the dangers of investing too much in other peoples conflicts. And if that is true of those who took that particular line, what of those on the other side of the equation who must find this near to incomprehensible? Ethical certainties? No shades of gray? Not half. As for Milošević and what he might make of this, well whatever one thinks of him, and I’m clearly no fan, he at least understood the exigencies of power. None better.