Milosevic: Fiend or hero?

Alessio Vinci, CNN's bureau chief in Belgrade, has conducted a survey of a cross-section of the Serb population on their opinions on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ahead of presidential elections on Sunday. Here are his notes:

This is how a pollster answered my question when I asked him about President Milosevic's popularity:

"If you ask people whom do you trust most?" Srdjan Bogosavljevic, of the Strategic Marketing & Media Research Institute said, "Around 25% will say Milosevic, and then a lot of opposition figures would follow behind him: Vajislav Kostunica, Zoran Djindjic, Vuk Draskovic, Dragoslav Avramovic and so on."

At the same time, Bogosavljevic's polls show that a majority of the people would never vote for Milosevic… thus coming to this conclusion:

Milosevic is the most popular, and the most unpopular, politician.

It is not a joke.

I tried to conduct a poll on my own, talking to people in the streets, poor and rich, young and old, and found his conclusions were right.

Many people here, especially among the young and well educated, are fed up with Milosevic's government and its policies that have brought this country to the verge of economic collapse.

But at the same time, if you ask other people, especially those who are older and those living in rural Serbia, many will answer that Milosevic is not the only guilty one, and that he is doing a fine job in protecting the country from foreign occupation.

People from abroad often ask me: "How come Milosevic is still enjoying support? Are people really going to vote for him after all he has done to the country?"

It is a complicated question. I will try to answer by telling you what people are telling me.

Recently I went to a pro-Milosevic rally far away from Belgrade -- a four-hour drive that took us close to the Romanian border. As we arrived most of the crowd was already there, around 10,000 people, bussed in from nearby factories and mines.

Among those people, who were clearly brought there by Milosevic's well-organised political campaign, he was nothing less than a hero -- and that did not just apply to the people who were surrounded by plainclothes policemen and security personnel.

At the end of the event, as we walked away, I spoke to some of them as they climbed on busses to return home. Here is a sample of what I heard:

"Milosevic's victory will give us a better life, more prosperity and more freedom and democracy." Another said: "Victory will bring us all the best: reconstruction and development. The way we are fighting against all and against sanctions… does not happen in every country. No other country would resist because we are strong."

Finally a man carrying a large Yugoslav flag said: "Let him be President for life. We only want him for President, down with NATO, down with the traitors and all others who hate Serbia."

After hearing several more I reached the conclusion that Milosevic still enjoys support because he has told his supporters here that the only alternative to his rule is a rule from the West which would bring, in his words, more bombs, more destruction and more misery.

One day, coming out of a press conference, I met an old lady painstakingly pushing a trolley filled with scrap. I approached her thinking that she would start lambasting the government for her misery.

But she did not. She certainly was not happy about her situation, but told me that Milosevic was not the man to blame -- others were.

I believe this is a sentiment that is shared by many across Serbia, especially outside the main industrial towns.

I also met farmers, construction workers, even some painters and singers. Milosevic is not the issue, they tell me. The problem is elsewhere.

Milosevic has blamed all of the country's problems on the West. If for years people were sceptical about that message, last year's NATO bombing campaign led by the United States gave him a perfect tool to reinforce in some people's minds that Western countries hate Serbs and want to occupy this land by force.

To reinforce that message Milosevic supporters are told to look at Kosovo. NATO arrived there last year, and since then hundreds of thousands of Serbs have fled the province, and those who remain live in enclaves. Hundreds have been killed.

Officials here downplay anything positive the UN administration has achieved in Kosovo, beginning with the return of almost a million displaced people expelled from Kosovo during the war last year by the Yugoslav forces.

All this is supported by effective anti-NATO and anti-Western propaganda conducted by the state-controlled media. Many Milosevic supporters talk the same way as state television does.

How big is Milosevic's support?

Independent analysts estimate he is supported today by around 1.3 million people. Most optimists say the figure is 1.8 million. So there is no doubt that Milosevic's is less popular today than he was when he was elected Serb President in 1990 with more than 3 million votes. In a new presidential election in 1992, he was elected with 2.6 million votes.

Yugoslav officials say Milosevic is more popular today than ever, and that he will win in the first round of elections. This means that they believe he will receive at least 2.5 million votes, depending on the turnout.

So support for President Milosevic, despite government assurances, appears to be dwindling. He is losing support especially among the youngest population, like students and young professionals, the sort of people who are having a hard time earning enough money to travel abroad, either on study or on vacation.

Some people remember that a decade ago people from neighbouring countries like Hungary would come to Yugoslavia to buy goods or to spend a weekend. Now the flow is reversed.

These people, despite a decade of disillusionment with the opposition, are giving their support to Vojislav Kostunica, the presidential candidate of the United Opposition of Serbia.

Most opinion polls show Kostunica is ahead of Milosevic, by at least 15%.

With the exception of those who support Kostunica… everybody else here says that these polls are pure fantasy, a distortion of reality. The ruling government is dismissing their results, saying the polls are Western-prepared propaganda, conducted by agencies paid by the West which wants Milosevic out of power.

Milosevic attends election rally in Montenegro
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View from Belgrade: Milosevic and the quest for power
September 18, 2000
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Yugoslavia Decides
TIME Europe | Yugoslavia: Kostunica's Poll Vault | 9/4/2000
TIME Europe | Montenegro: Hovering on the Brink | 9/4/2000

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