Monday, February 14, 2005

What's the story?


/ twin / Kosovos /
How does this compare to this. What was the message Tadic sent from Kosovo? "This is Serbia"? Reminds me of a much less forceful statement.
Anyway things might be getting out of hand in new ways already.

4 comments:

zdenka pregelj said...

Very good comparisson.
Mr Tadić visiting Kosovo is legitimate act, but what he said there, and the Serbian flag that he gave as a present to the villagers... Let us hope it is only pre-election campaign for DS.

Anonymous said...

I'm inclined to agree with Eric's analysis over at East Ethnia: it's about the next election, and showing up.

Tadic seems to be shaping up as a better politician than Kostunica. Not that this is setting the bar too very high. But every Albanian stone or rotten tomato was worth a thousand votes.

BTW, Slobo's '89 speech at Kosovo field was plenty provocative if you knew what he was talking about. "Serbia after many years, after many decades, has at last regained its state, national and spiritual integrity" -- that means "We've restored centralized rule of Kosovo from Belgrade. Now we're going to fire all the Albanians and give their jobs to Serbs. These filthy Shqips will be put in their place at last."

The constant appeals to "unity" -- a word used something like 25 times? That means "We're going to have some sort of elections soon. Do you want to vote for some scruffy students and dissidents, or for the man who has gone from strength to strength?"

"Serbs have never in the whole of their history conquered or exploited others" -- oh, I can't even begin to unpack the ripe, stinking layers of semiotic evil nonsense there. Though it must have been interesting to see the reactions from fYU's other ethnic groups when they read that in the paper the next morning.

I like the mouth-breathing framing text, though. Albanian FASCIST racist secessionists!

Anyway, kudos to Tadic for going. As for poor Ivanovic... well, he ran in the elections and got something like 20 votes. Resigned afterwards IMS. If the hardliners blow him up I'll be very sorry but not surprised. (Though it would be pretty damn stupid. Way to make your side look good: kill one of the, like, four guys that the international community has identified as a "moderate".)

Oh, and: apparently Haradinaj is now saying that there's no indictment. Which is odd, given that he's kept mum for six weeks since the indictment deadline on Jan. 1. Did he just find out that no sealed indictment was delivered to the court then? Or -- was one delivered, reviewed, and then rejected? I could see that too.

I just wonder what he knows, and how.

cheers,


Doug M.

talos said...

Doug: should the process of Kosovo's independence proceed, as it is very likely to within the year, there are three alternatives:

- either Tadic goes along with the plan, in which case he doesn't get any Kosovo votes because the K/S voters will be voting in Kosovo and not in Serbia, and even if they do they won't be inclined to vote for the "traitor"

- he doesn't, and makes some sort of nationalist stand, in which case he will indeed get many votes - but that's not what Eric is saying. "This is Serbia" goes along with this scenario wonderfully.

- he wavers and loses the votes.

So the only scenario where he actually wins these votes (which apparently would soon enough be foreign voters anyway), is the one where the Radicals endorse him, and he starts a seccessionist war in Kosovo (which seems likely anyway).

As for Slobo's speech, well you must agree that for a casual reader it's very underwhelming.

Anonymous said...

Timing is everything. If the elections are held before the Kosovo process (whatever it's called) gets under way, then Tadic is going to pick up votes, both in Kosovo and in Serbia itself. Getting stoned by Albanians! How cool is that!

If not, then he's screwed. But not any worse than if he'd stayed home.

So it's a very sensible move IMO.

Slobo's speech: sure. But the casual reader isn't who it was aimed at.

It's interesting, though, because (1) it's not very good -- Slobo never was a great orator; and (2) it's a funny hybrid of Communist/socialist language and nationalist tropes.

I wonder if there's an annotated copy showing just where the crowd went wild.


Doug M.