Word: strongman
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...buildings, supported by tens of thousands of demonstrators outside. And most worrying for Milosevic may be the fact that the police for the most part refrained from using violence to stop them. The demonstrators are demanding that Milosevic concede the presidency to opposition leader Vojislav Kostunica, who beat the strongman at the polls 11 days ago. Milosevic had challenged his opponents to a fight on the street Wednesday, when his constitutional court responded to opposition claims of electoral fraud by annulling the results and simply ordering a new election. That ruling closed off the last legal avenue for achieving Milosevic...
Dictators almost never go gently after elections. And if ever one has had a compelling interest in staying on, it's Slobodan Milosevic. Yugoslavia's malign strongman of 13 years and mastermind of four ever more savage ethnic wars lives under international indictment for crimes against humanity. But, suddenly, the man who successfully depicted himself as being at one with the Serb people has lost his aura of invincibility with the stunning official admission that he came in second in last week's presidential ballot. No one knew which of his nighttime hideouts he was holed...
...count. But now he's challenging his opponents to a battle in the streets to claim their prize. After a triumphant opposition rally in Belgrade Wednesday night at which some 200,000 Serbs demanded that Milosevic abandon his plans to force a runoff vote on October 8, the strongman's electoral commission announced early Thursday that its final results showed opposition leader Vojislav Kostunica with 48.96 percent of the vote compared with Milosevic's 38.62 percent - and ordered the runoff poll because Kostunica had failed to clear the 50 percent hurdle for a first-round victory. The opposition and independent...
...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...
...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...