Politics in the Balkans

01 June 2004

"... real compromise is a situation where both sides are dissatisfied with the solution..." Henry Kissinger, Former US Secretary of State

That we live in the age of politics and political is not much of a novelty. Go out and sit in your local cafe. Provided that your local cafe is located somewhere in the countries of the Southeast Europe, the chances are that the people on the table next to you will sip their espresso calmly and discuss the local political scene in a rather heated fashion.

Politics or some of the skills necessary to the practitioners of that mystic art are used daily by pretty much every person on this planet. We negotiate the prices at the green markets, children negotiate the amounts of weekly allowances or �back home and in bed� deadlines with their parents. It had even managed, to some extent at least, to regulate the way we talk, through the concept of political correctness.

Naturally, that men (and women) are political animals � Aristotel�s �zoon politicon� � has been clear for at least 23 centuries. Politics, after all, are useful, as they provide the necessary instruments to reach policy decisions pertinent to the society and solve conflicts and problems in a peaceful manner, acceptable to the majority of citizens in a society.

In the Balkans (or to use the politically correct term Southeast Europe) the politics have even greater impact on the daily lives of the citizens. It�s not much of a surprise, considering the situation. The lagging economic reforms have wrecked chaos on the previous system�s policy of guaranteed employment, so that in some countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia come to mind) the official unemployment rates are listed in the low 40�s. The situation is not better in the other countries in the region, either.

What to say of the consequences of the decade of wars that rampaged through former Yugoslavia? War is, after all, �a continuation of politics with other means�, von Klausewitz would add. Sold on the ideas of consolidated national states on consolidated ethnic territories, the people of the Balkans seem unable to shake off and discard the politics of nationalism, chauvinism and exclusion.

The fact that globalizing processes and the influx of cheaper foreign made consumer goods have destroyed outdated local industries and released armies of unemployed to the streets and to the realms of gray economy, have hardly endeared the prevailing discourse of European integrations, free market economy and the such, to the hearts of the local population.

As Branislav Sarkanjac, political philosopher from Macedonia says �for two thousand years, there have been only one legitimate political demand �I want it all and I want it now��. Not to mention the fact that the political aspirations of the voters in the Balkans rarely corresponds to the idea of the good, responsible citizen promoted by the envoys of the West. The people of these parts have moved to the left, demanding social rights that they feel were lost with the collapse of socialist regimes, but also to the rights, demanding national and collective rather than civil and individual rights. It is not surprising that the Serb Radical Party has such a following in Serbia, when we see that their declared platform answers, at least declaratively, those burning issues of social justice and inexpensive food and national/ist aspirations for �greater ethnic states.�

Our dossier is mostly interested in the interaction between the politics and the civil society in the region. The civic society organizations are, by default, designed to raise the profile and institutionalize the political interests of the local communities. The citizens are used to a situation in which all the solutions come from above. Rarely the local communities get organized, formulate their demands and try to pressure the government and the competent authorities to find solutions to their problems.

And we don�t think only of specialized organizations that work in the field of voter education, election monitoring or fight against corruption. A good example is Veles, Macedonia, once among the most polluted cities in Europe. A grassroots movement concentrated on the environmental issue of pollution caused by the local lead and zinc smelter resulted in such a coordinated pressure on the Government that the disputed industry had to be closed until they procured proper filtering equipment.

The non-governmental organizations in the region are a separate story. Most of them are, indeed, involved greatly in the political processes. Recently, in Macedonia, there have been a lot of talk and complaints by the political opposition about the alleged (or real, for that matter) engagement of the NGOs in the Presidential Election campaign. That is not a crime in itself, but the accusations are that they took the side of a single candidate running in the elections and acted as an efficient pressure group. Read the opinion article by Jove Kekenovski (originally published in Macedonian daily Vreme.

Another good example can be found in Kosovo where, this year, many civil society organizations were involved in a large campaign trying to bring a new election process, which would bring the voter closer to the decision-making process, but at the end of the day, it was the political parties and international bodies that arbitrarily chose not to change. See one of the articles published in SEE Portal (Open Lists Are Direct Expression of Democracy.

There is another problem that the non-governmental organization will have to overcome. The NGOs are treated with suspicion. Their funding coming mostly from abroad, they are established not as a result of a local need or initiative, but by �outside assessment� of what the needs �are.� Therefore, they come to a situation of having to promote ideas and policies that are, in the best case scenario, deemed not that important by the local constituencies. Just ask the activists that work on reconciliation how easy it is to convince the people to accept the idea of tolerance for the members of other ethnic, social, racial or religious group.

Finally, one of the biggest shortcomings, in the view of the common people, of the current political situation is that politics is increasingly adopted as a professional calling by people who have more bureaucratic qualities than personal charisma. The times of picturesque autocrats or ruthless dictators that dominated the politics in the Balkans, think of Josip Broz-Tito or Enver Hoxha as typical examples of the two, respectively, are gone and there is little chance that they might return. For a region with a strong tradition of autocratic rule, the current generation of politicians is too colourless to attract a wider following.

So, where does the Balkans stand at the moment? All the countries in the region are slowly moving towards the much desired membership of the European Union. The local politics increasingly reflect the dictate coming from Brussels or Washington (not necessarily a bad thing, to be sure). Those ideas are more often than not in collision with the wishes and aspirations of the local population. The people have resigned to the idea that, whomever they vote to power, will soon change the policies to approximate them with the current demands from abroad.

Indeed, let�s take, for instance, the issue of reconciliation (see OneWorld SEE Reconciliation Dossier). Suddenly, an increased number of politicians are taking the road of Nelson Mandela. That is a worthwhile and commendable effort, but somehow, it does look insincere. There are good qualities of �double talk� in the words of our politics. Running candidates say one thing to the ambassadors and representatives of the big supranational organizations and the other to their constituencies. An (un)healthy dose of nationalist populism can do miracles for an uncertain election campaign, while messages of reconciliation and tolerance rarely perform at the satisfactory level.

This is where the politicians should heed the advice of their international partners. Reconciliation is much longer process, obviously, than is universally desired, and it will take the real leadership of the political elites in order to achieve it in a record breaking fashion. Perhaps, risking to be judged preposterous, the politicians should try and use their speeches designed for the European Commission officials on their citizens, and vice versa. Try to explain to the people what the difficulties are instead of sweeping them under the carpet.

That is potentially dangerous situation. Although the foreign intervention prevents, in the view of many, the antagonistic ethnic groups and states to seek violent solutions to real or imaginary problems, it has left a disillusioned populace which is less and less interested in pursuing its political rights. Take Serbia as an example, which failed to elect a new President in three consecutive elections, due to the fact that a vast majority of voters chose to abstain.

The real goal, therefore, is to animate the people to take a renewed interest in the politics, for that is the only way to ensure that they will have control of their own lives and destinies.