Word: serbs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...powerful Serbian Orthodox Church, which on Thursday declared Kostunica the winner and urged a peaceful transition, the opposition has a tough task ahead. Right now they're riding a wave of popular anger that will likely be sustained in the coming days as Milosevic blatantly tries to cheat Serb voters. But Milosevic may be calculating that if he manages to hold his regime together for a couple of weeks of street protest and conduct the runoff without Kostunica, the protests might eventually dissipate in disillusion. The challenge for the opposition, then, is to provoke a crisis in the regime...
...Western governments are trying to prod Milosevic into leaving, but after last year's bombings they don't exactly wield much influence in Belgrade. Their best bet for diplomatic leverage remains Moscow, which played the key role in persuading the Serb strongman to back down in Kosovo. Diplomatic efforts are reportedly afoot to coax Milosevic into leaving Serbia and seeking asylum either in Russia or Belarus to avoid prosecution in the Hague. But that may be overstating his immediate crisis - after all, Kostunica has stated that he's not interested in sending Milosevic for trial as a war criminal...
...Yugoslavia's presidential election, but not the full extent of his defeat - and that sets the stage for a dramatic showdown with an opposition ready to take to the streets to claim its victory. Preliminary official results announced Tuesday put opposition leader Vojislav Kostunica eight points ahead of the Serb strongman, but deny him the 50 percent margin required to claim first-round victory. Opposition leaders scoff at the figures released by Milosevic's electoral commission, confidently claiming that independent officials monitoring the count at local ballot stations confirm that Kostunica won 55 percent of the vote. Reading Milosevic...
...Still, the tide has turned dramatically against Milosevic. If even the official election results reflect a defeat by the opposition, it may be only a matter of time before the military, business and political elites that have kept the Serb strongman in power begin trying to secure their own positions in a post-Milosevic Yugoslavia. Already the rabid nationalists of Vojislav Seselj's Radical Party - once the most bellicose backers of Milosevic's military misadventures of the past decade - have jumped ship, proclaiming a Kostunica victory and urging that it be respected. Kostunica is no NATO shill - he even suggested...
...relied to keep him in power may now conclude that he has become a liability. Kostunica may well turn out to be Milosevic's worst nightmare, not simply because he's more popular with voters, but also because he may be sufficiently acceptable to the military and other Serb elites to allow them to finally jettison a leader who presided over a decade of disaster. Kostunica, after all, is a nationalist - albeit comparitively moderate - and firmly opposed to NATO. He's even vowed that, if elected, he won't hand Milosevic over for trial in the Hague...