with racism still being the core of their hateful party. Their leader advocated killing Croats with rusty spoons and infecting Albanians with the AIDS virus. Sadly, that may qualify as populist in Serbia.

Nikolic broadened the party from just an ethnic/racist party (that can only get 5 to 10% of the votes)) to a truly populist party that also talks about corruption, poverty and other issues that appeal to the common man.

It looks like Seselj didn’t like this very much. When after the last elections the party had some chance to form a government he more or less destroyed that with his praise for the murder of Đinđić.

It is my impression that Nikolic has a good chance to form a core for the opposition that may one day replace the present government. The SPS would seem the natural party for that role (like the former communists elsewhere), but they seem unable to find a broader audience.

The Radicals got 29%, which was their all-time high water mark. But, well.

You know: if Nikolic creates a new party somehow, he’d be placed to compete with the Socialists for membership in the government. That would be amusing.

Doug M.

- Saying that “a fifth” of all votes is waster is an overstatement. Yes, some votes get wasted, but in the end, it all amounts to no more than 5 parliament members. The reason SRS has more: they actually have ~30% of the voters (somewhere over a million); in fact, SRS is known as having a very disciplined voting body.

- Re: “political club”. I’m not exactly sure on all the details, but as I understand, speaking time (for example) is divided between the clubs, and the presidents of the political clubs have regular consultations with the… uhh, chairman? over what’ll be disscussed in the next session. Because of that, having one is usually very beneficial - for example, the minor parties in the ZES coallition all have their own clubs.

Adrian: I very much doubt he’ll do that. Breaking away from SRS is a very good chance to start with a clean(er) image, and such a move would definitely tarnish it.

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My own take on the situation? Definitely fairly interesting, and I can certainly see where Nikolić is coming from - while he was “running the show” the party went from 300k to 1.3 mil voters. In addition, he has always been more moderate than Šešelj. It will also be interesting to see where Vučić will go (a high ranking SRS official). BTW, for those keeping a running tally, Nikolić’s club has 19 members today (I’m not exactly sure whether this includes him or not), out of the total 78 SRS has.