Mladic arrest bolsters an unpopular Serb govt Saturday, 28 May 2011 01:17

The arrest of war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic looks set to provide Serbian President Boris Tadic with a much-needed political boost as it promises progress towards EU membership and the economic aid that brings.

Serbian officials have repeatedly said Belgrade expected to gain EU candidate status in October and a date to begin membership talks by the end of the year. Those expectations were seen as key to boosting Tadic’s Democratic Party’s (DS) fortunes in an early 2012 vote.

Mladic’s arrest seems perfectly timed to realise that goal.

“I don’t think this just fell out of the sky,” said one regional diplomat.

“It was motivated by domestic political concerns and the realisation that if the DS even has a chance in the election it is going to have to do it with a substantial pat on the back and approvals and hugs from the EU to make it happen,” he said.

In Belgrade two weeks ago, U.N. war crimes prosecutor Serge Brammertz delivered a sober warning that Serbia was not doing enough to find Mladic, a key condition of EU progress, and his report was due to be made public at the United Nations in June.

“The Brammertz report probably would have made it impossible to deliver EU membership progress,” the diplomat said.

Tadic has dismissed suggestions that he knew Mladic’s whereabouts but many doubt the Serbian government can have been unaware of where Mladic was.

“Mladic remaining at large was an enduring symbol of the corruption because average Serbs knew that the government knew where he was, and the fact that he was staying at relative’s house named Mladic seems to prove this point,” said one foreign official involved in promoting democracy in Serbia.

After a very narrow re-election in 2008 and his party victory, Tadic led the emerging Balkans economy through the world financial crisis that brought recession and slowed foreign investment needed for its recovery after the 1990s wars. Recent polls show Tadic’s pro-Western DS trailing far behind the party of opposition leader Tomislav Nikolic, a nationalist who has also embraced the EU as the path forward for Serbia. Presidential elections are in 2013.

Marko Blagojevic, director of operations at Centre for Free Elections and Democracy (CESID) think tank, said that Mladic’s arrest may affect Tadic’s ratings positively in the short term.

However, to have a longer-term impact on the DS’s ratings for next year’s election, there has to be visible improvement of the country’s EU chances and in living standards, he said.

“If it does reflect on the country’s progress toward the EU, it will reflect on Tadic’s ratings. If not, people might think that it was all in vain, which may further boost an already growing disillusionment with the EU,” Blagojevic said.

Gaining membership status would enable Serbia to get more EU aid, but some question whether the government would efficiently use this money to improve the lives of Serbians, whose standard of living trails many in former Communist Eastern Europe which once envied Yugoslavia’s relatively high living standards.

Fortunately for Tadic, he has received promising signals since Thursday’s arrest from the EU and more locally.

“It also means a lot in creating the new momentum and atmosphere for enlargement process ... and not only in this region but among the member states,” EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule said in Montenegro on Friday.

And former Yugoslav foreign minister Goran Svilanovic said of Tadic’s government, “They will be seen as decisive and able to deliver on their promises. “This does not mean that public opinion is all of a sudden less nationalistic and pro-Hague oriented, but it means the people will eventually respect the government’s ability to act.”

For some Serbians Mladic remains a national hero and they see his arrest as yet another unwelcome foreign intervention. “We will not give up Ratko,” small groups of demonstrators chanted in central Belgrade on Thursday evening.

“Unfortunately, many Serbs continue to believe that Mladic was a true hero defending the Bosnian Serb people,” said former US ambassador to Serbia Bill Montgomery, who has worked as a political consultant to Nikolic.

“So they will view his arrest as a cynical move by the government to curry Western favour such as progress on joining the EU at the expense of an individual hero. So this will (earn) Tadic great credit in the West, but will not help him in Serbia,” Montgomery said.

Mladic’s arrest may however help Tadic avoid making politically damaging concessions on Kosovo and Bosnia and still make progress towards the EU, said Christian Schwarz-Schilling, a former top international envoy to Bosnia.

“It’s timed exactly to the day so the topic of necessary reforms -- relations with neighbours with respect to Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina -- have been swept from the table and would no longer be the crucial issues,” he said. “There are other issues that could be much more damaging domestically, like recognising Kosovo.”

Reuters