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Serbia: More Views on Boris Tadic's Re-Election

Categories: Eastern & Central Europe, Poland, Serbia, United Kingdom, Elections, History, Politics, Protest

Democracy has passed one more very difficult exam in Serbia, eight years since the end of Slobodan Milosevic's regime [1]: the incumbent president Boris Tadic [2] got re-elected on Feb. 3, with 50.5 percent of the vote to Tomislav Nikolic [3]‘s 47.9 percent.

The previous Global Voices post on the outcome of the election [4] covered reactions of the Anglophone Serbia bloggers. Below is a translation from Serbian of two more posts, both published on B92's blog portal.

Branislav Kovačević Cole wrote [5] on Feb. 4:

[…] Instead of congratulating Boris Tadic, I would caution him to study the results of the election very carefully. He should not think that the rating of his Democratic Party has increased. And he should be grateful to all those voters who were much more mature than their political leaders… […]

[…] After this victory, Boris Tadic and the Democratic Party have a huge responsibility. No time for celebration.
I congratulate all citizens who went to the polls and in this way stopped the radicals from taking over.

Nune Popović wrote [6] on Feb. 5:

Serbia's anti-democratic forces learned their political lesson on [Oct. 5 [7]], 2000, and their influence has been growing stronger since. Unlike them, the democratic forces failed to learn their lessons and heed the warnings. They locked themselves inside their dilettantish circle, having a false picture of the situation in Serbia and giving themselves undeserved credit for fictional democracy in Serbia.

The democratic coalition has got little time for decisive political fight against radical national-socialist parties in Serbia this time. […]

[…] Poland has the the Institute of National Remembrance [8], a state body that makes sure their people never forget what the criminals from different structures of the former regime did in their country in the past. The goal is for them to be found and arrested.

If Serbia had a similar institution, we would not have to remind citizens of who the radicals used to be, [Vojislav Seselj [9]], [Slobodan Milosevic [10]] and their regime. And we would not have to remind ourselves of what they did to us and why they are still unpunished. They are again right behind us. Some of them behave as if nothing happened when they had absolute authority, and they are not punished. […]