Ultranationalist-Turned-Liberal Is Expected to Lead Serbia
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Version 0 of 1. Aleksandar Vucic, the man expected to be Serbia’s next prime minister, is a former ultranationalist who recast himself as a pro-Western liberal and is determined to shepherd the poor Balkan country toward the European Union. After what analysts said was a landslide victory in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, Mr. Vucic is all but assured of becoming Serbia’s next prime minister. With 99 percent of the vote counted, Serbia’s election commission said Monday that Mr. Vucic’s center-right Progressive Party had won 48 percent, with 13.5 percent for its current coalition partner, the Socialist Party, which came in second. Mr. Vucic, 44, once a close ally of the Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, has attained wide popularity as the country’s first deputy prime minister by waging a battle against corruption and lawlessness, and advocating strong ties with Europe and the United States. More than two decades after politicians across the Balkans stoked a virulent nationalism that boiled over into war, countries from Bosnia to Serbia to Kosovo have abandoned the nationalism of the past and are jockeying to integrate with Europe. At a time when the struggling interim government in Ukraine has vowed to pursue closer ties with Europe in the face of intransigence from Russia, Serbia is seen as a strong example of the European Union’s “soft power,” its ability to push a country to make difficult economic and political changes in return for the prospect of joining the world’s largest trading bloc. In pursuit of membership in the union, Serbia arrested the Bosnian-Serb war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic in 2011, and handed him over to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. More recently, it signed a landmark power-sharing agreement with Kosovo, which defied Belgrade by declaring independence from Serbia in 2008. “I promise I will fight for Serbia and for the Serbian people,” Mr. Vucic told jubilant supporters on Sunday, according to B92, an independent Serbian broadcaster. “My goal is not to be rich. My only goal is for Serbs to live better.” Mr. Vucic has promised to continue to press for membership in the European Union, overhaul Serbia’s pension system and labor market, tackle its large debt, and improve the quality of life of Serbs, who have faced a weak economy and are becoming impatient as their country languishes on the margins of Europe. Even in a region where former archnationalists and guerrilla fighters have sought to recast themselves, Mr. Vucic’s transformation from staunch Milosevic ally to ardent proponent of the West is viewed as remarkable. Yet some critics say it is a move born of pragmatism rather than conviction and have warned that Mr. Vucic is determined to centralize power. Ljiljana Smajlovic, the editor in chief of Politika, a leading Serbian newspaper, said Mr. Vucic’s spectacular rise had caused some concern in Serbia that he could become intoxicated with power and revert to the ways of the past. But she said she believed that his political transformation was credible, and that he would not deviate from a pro-Western path. “His power is for real, and this gives some people pause that the new soft-spoken Vucic will revert to the old ways,” she said by phone from Belgrade. At the age of 28, Mr. Vucic attained the post of minister of information under Mr. Milosevic, and in the late 1990s he was instrumental in passing a media law — called the “Vucic Decree” — that used punishing fines, among other measures, to silence opponents of the Milosevic government. Later, he became a leading light in the Serbian Radical Party, an anti-Western, ultranationalist party that celebrated indicted war criminals and was led by the fiery Vojislav Seselj, who turned himself over to the tribunal in The Hague in February 2003 to face war crime charges. But in 2008, Mr. Vucic abandoned the party and recast himself as a pro-European politician. While he had once railed against Kosovo’s independence from Serbia — which politicians of all stripes in Serbia, including Mr. Vucic, vehemently oppose — he has since taken a more pragmatic stance. He has played a pivotal role in supporting the power-sharing agreement with Kosovo that has helped clear Serbia’s path toward eventually joining the European Union. |