The government is aware that the population is in decline.

The road will be difficult. Agriculture, will be the asset that keeps them a float until they can secure contracts for light industrial work. It’s location is not bad…definitely better than some of the others.

NATO sure put a bunch of civilians out of work though.

‘The privatization of Telekom Srpska was quite remarkably corrupt ‘

As Vuk would say you are mixing grandmothers and frogs - well not really. Remember Telekom Srpska has only just been sold. Telekom Srbija is what you meant!

bytcci ‘how can you seperate the ‘nationalism’ votes from the ’social populism’ votes? ‘

You cant of course - with much accuracy. But as an individual you can talk to these people - away from the rallies and so on. In another period some of these people (believe it or not) were followers of Titoism. What happened - their ability to be manipulated remained but they fell prey to bombastic rhetoric and empty promises.

Yes, as a whole they are destructive but they (unable to look at the big picture) would say that it is people like you and me that are the destructive ones. Not only do we want them to lose their jobs (effectively) we want rid of them or at least somehow to sweep them under the carpet.

Something has to happen - those more educated who vote radical and less tribal in their support need to be given a realistic alternative party to support their social concerns. The most realistic prospect is DSS and DS as both moderate their reform mindedness with social policies - the later because they are more sadly conservative and the former because of their social democratic philosophy. Let me give you another example remember how high businessman Karic was riding? All social demagogy and he was regularly recording support of 15 percent.

Of course the more machiavelian method of dealing with this is divide and rule. Its not my job but by far the most effective thing to do would be to ‘encourage’ part of the Radical Party to break away. Bear this little fact in mind DSS, G17, LDP are all break offs from the Democratic Party (although admittedly about half of todays supporters of DSS are as close to the radical party).

It doesnt take a MENSA member to work out what a serious split in SRS would do. It could destroy them as a serious political force.

But to return to your question - as I said there is no way of truly knowing. But then I’d if people should automatically assume its just because of nationalism if we really dont know. Of course I know there are a wide range of motives for thinking it is just nationalism above all its the easy explanation whenever words like Balkan come up people expect the n word to follow.

The privatization of Telekom Srpska was quite remarkably corrupt (I know you’ll be shocked to hear). Nor was it exceptional. Slobo privatized a number of state-owned firms, almost all to friends and cronies.

Mid-1990s Serbia was not “socialist” in any meaningful sense. It was “the elite have decided to steal everything that’s not nailed down, under cover of a war and national emergency -ist”.

Doug M.

Everyone now forgets that Milosevic wasn’t quite as copperbottomed a socialist when he was in charge as in retrospect. After all, he privatised Telekom Srpska in, what, 1996 - in a deal involving NatWest, who at the time had a former British Foreign Secretary on their board who had something of a reputation for being nice to him.

If he’s a socialist, then, well …

Good point. But just how can you seperate the ‘nationalism’ votes from the ’social populism’ votes? And, in essence these two things are very similar. They can do about the same amount of damage to a country and its neighbours. The point is destructive forces in Serbia are still strong. Although, the improvement of DS is encouraging.

It’s a pity that the Radical Party didn’t win outright victory. It’s a pity that G17-Plus was not obliterated. By the way, there was rebuilding going on in Serbia in 1999 and 2000, and that ended after the October coup and why? The need to conform to orthodoxy.

Did you post as Ricardus several months ago? If so, we had this discussion before.

At any rate, in 1999-2000, in the absence of foreign investment on any scale Serbia under Milosevic was exhausting its last sources of domestic capital, including the capital funds needed to maintain its infrastructure. Had Milosevic stayed in power, Serbia would have adopted something worrisomely close to a North Korean growth trajectory.

Of course I would add that the IMF is hardly a neutral party without an agenda but many of their concerns are well taken. Above all Serbia lacks investment, it also trails behind other countries in terms of infrastructure.

I hope that the National Investment Plan is put to better use by the next government. Whilst on this point if anybody is wondering what I meant by the IMF comment this is pertinent. The IMF and other world financial institutions dont much like state investment as, according to their economic philosophy, it crowds out private investment (or to be more precise crowds out potential investors from countries that are influential at institutions such as the IMF et al).

My reply (and those econonmists similarly minded) is that state investment can be economically useful although it tends to be abused by short-termist politicians who want to buy votes.

Oh and I agree that investment revenues are overstated. Firstly, not much of it was greenfield, secondly as you pointed out Serbia’s starting point is much lower, thirdly for some perspective Romanias investment revenue last year was almost double this total. Still, economic performance wasnt bad but could be better.

I think that the next government’s economic policies will be crucial. Oh, it might interest you to know that the democratic party became the first party in Serbia to advocate policy ensuring that ordinary shareholders will be able to participate in state privatisations. This I think is a positive, although it drew a negative response from other parties for the usual reasons - the average Serb doesnt have enough money etc etc.

In my opinion the key indicator to how serious / succesful this government will be is how long we will have to wait for a new government to be formed. Anything more than a month and I’ll be increasingly pesimistic.

‘Europe should not make the mistake of underestimating Serbian nationalism, and dissmissing SRS votes as merely ‘frustration votes.’

Disagree. The danger lies in making the mistake of overestimating votes for SRS as being for nationalism when they are also votes for social populism. When you are uneducated, working for a loss making state industry it makes perfect sense to vote for the radical party whether you are a nationalist or not.

The same is true if you are unemployed or indeed a refugee or displaced person. If you have no tomorrow a sentiment of ‘To hell with the system, lets make everybody suffer’ - might be stupid but it isnt necessarily nationalism.

As somebody who closely observed the election on that level what worries me more is DSS lurch to the right to try to capture radical party voters.

Turkey and Croatia have been on separate paths to the EU since mid-late 2006 as Croatia’s accession negotiations have continued apace while Turkey’s have abruptly stalled over Cyprus etc.; the two accession candidates in other words are no longer correlated.

Indeed, a greater concern for the Croats is the nature and extent of the current round of EU Constitutional “body-work” that is currently being addressed by Germany in its role as current rotating EU president country…that said, unlike all of the other countries mentioned previously, only Croatia carries a significant net-positive support/approval rating from existing EU members for accession into the EU. Despite the threat of setbacks within the EU, the momentum for its accession negotiations deservedly continues to build as per the following quote found in today’s Helsingen Sanomat:

http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Difficult+task+of+reviving+EU+constitution/1135224513377

“On the other hand, supporters of a mini
agreement know that Germany is less than convincing when it emphasises that the EU cannot expand beyond its current size, if no comprehensive agreement is not reached. The EU’s 28th member could be Germany’s long-standing friend and EU ward Croatia, whose moves into the EU will certainly not be blocked by Germany, regardless of whether or not there is a treaty.”