Serb Hard-liner Leads in Presidential Vote-Monitors

Reuters ^ | Sun Jun 13, 2004 03:16 PM ET | Reuters

[Jane_N]

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Hardline nationalist Tomislav Nikolic won most votes in Serbia's presidential election on Sunday and will face reformer Boris Tadic in a June 27 run-off, according to a preliminary forecast by independent monitors.

Nikolic, whose Radical Party is led by war crimes suspect Vojislav Seselj, now detained in The Hague, won 30.7 percent in the election's first round against 27.4 for Tadic, the Center for Free Elections and Democracy (CESID) said

[ThreePuttinDude]

Ive always loved Serbian women.

Princess Jelisaveta Karadjordjevic, a member of Serbia's royal family and a presidential candidate, (L) poses with her daughter U.S. actress Catherine Oxenberg (C) and granddaughter India outside a polling station before voting at Serbian Presidential elections in Belgrade June 13, 2004. Photo by Ivan Milutinovic/Reuters

[Jane_N]

More on the elections in Serbia from Voice of America News, http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=EEA96017-9439-4235-A0C8FF993A6330EC&title=Nationalist%20Hardliner%20Leads%20in%20Serbian%20Presidential%20Election&catOID=45C9C78C-88AD-11D4-A57200A0CC5EE46C&categoryname=Europe

Nationalist Hardliner Leads in Serbian Presidential Election
by Stefan Bos, Budapest, 13 Jun 2004, 13:47 UTC

The people of Serbia are making a fourth bid to elect a new president. This time, the rules have been changed to ensure there is a winner. Public opinion polls indicate it could be the candidate from the nationalist right, a political ally of former President Slobodan Milosevic, who is on trial on war crimes charges.

To prepare for this election, the Serbian parliament abolished a law that required a minimum turnout of 50 percent to validate a presidential poll. That requirement resulted in the failure of three previous election attempts, and left Serbia without a president for the past year-and-a-half.

None of the 15 candidates is expected to get more than half of the votes, forcing a run-off later in the month between the top two.

Public opinion polls say the leading candidate will be nationalist Tomislav Nikolic, of the Serbian Radical Party, which was allied with the former president of Serbia and later Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, who is the most prominent person on trial at the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj is also on trial at the Tribunal.

Western nations have expressed concern at the prospect Mr. Nikolic might become Serbia's president. They say it would scare away investors and postpone the date that Serbia, and its partner Montenegro, could join the European Union. In addition, the United States and other countries have linked millions of dollars in Western aid to Serbia's cooperation with the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal.

Mr. Nikolic's Serbian Radical Party despises that institution, and he has said Serbs wanted by the Tribunal should only be encouraged to surrender, not captured and extradited as the court has demanded.

Although the powers of the Serbian president are limited, analysts say a victory by Mr. Nikolic could bring down the minority reformist government of the more pro-Western Serbian prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica.

Mr. Kostunica needs the support of Mr. Nikolic's Radical Party to stay in office. The prime minister has recently changed his policy on the War Crimes Tribunal, calling for "serious cooperation" with it, in order to promote Serbia's integration into Europe.

Mr. Nikolic is likely to face a run-off in two weeks against the soft spoken pro-Western Democratic Party chief Boris Tadic. The Democrats are still trying to heal the wounds from the assassination last year of Zoran Djindjic, their leader and Serbia's first non-communist prime minister since World War I.

Bogoljub Karic, a millionaire tycoon whose business empire includes a cell phone network, a bank, a large construction company and a television station, was expected to come in third, despite his promise to revive Serbia's economy. The candidate of Prime Minister Kostunica's ruling coalition, former parliamentary speaker Dragan Marsicanin, has slipped to fourth in the public-opinion polls.

[Jane_N]

I had forgotten that Catherine Oxenburg was a decendant of the Serbian royal family, thanks for reminding me. I'll have to show that picture to my hubby :)

[ThreePuttinDude]

I've lived with and grew up with Serbs my whole life
And I can assure you, they are proud as heck of her..

I would be too......TPD

[wardaddy]

Wow....Oxenberg looks yummy.

Almost 43...sweet genes.

[wardaddy]

Aren't they in the Habsberg line?

gvb, I know it's a longshot...fingers crossed.

[Decombobulator]

Someone who opposes his country being occupied by a foreign force, and opposes extraditing his own citizens to a foreign court, is a hardliner?

[Jane_N]

According to most media sources he is....I just post the article, I don't write it :)

[ThreePuttinDude]

Someone who opposes his country being occupied by a foreign force, and opposes extraditing his own citizens to a foreign court, is a hardliner?

Thats what I've been saying for years. Clinton was backing the invaders, and the generations of locals were the hardliners for protecting their farms and homes.
It's sick I tell ya'

[SQUID]

This is a joke, every Serb who cares for his own people and country and is willing to defend his nation against the terrorist Muslim Albanians is considered a "hardliner". But the muslims that want to push out Serbs from Kosovo and the muslims that created the islamic state of Bosna are not hardliners but rather freedom fighters.

I suppose that Lincoln was a hardliner when he fight to preserve the Union. So, this word must be a good thing?

The word hardliner is used to portray a man as unreasonable, unwilling to discuss peaceful options through diplomacy etc...

Propaganda words. I can write a story about 9/11 and simply change a few words around like freedom fighters for terrorists and we have a whole new ball game. Sick.

Another word muslim apologists like to use the the "Serbian Reformists". Well, reformist means someone who is willing to take some money and do what they are told so that the Serbs stay under the boot of NATO and their peace loving Muslims who by the way know about democracy like I know about what's on the other side of death.

[Goetz_von_Berlichingen]

"Aren't they in the Habsberg line?"

Absolutely not. One thing about which the Habsburgs have always been particular is that their marriages must be to other Roman Catholics. The Serbian royal family is Eastern Orthodox ("not that there's anything wrong with that").

[wardaddy]

Thanks for setting me straight and good to see ya.

I'm honoured!

[royalcello]

You'd almost certainly have to go back to before the Reformation to find any Habsburg ancestors of Princess Elisabeth. However, just for fun, I looked up the closest genealogical relationship between Princess Elisabeth and Archduke Otto of Austria, the current head of the House of Habsburg. It turns out that they are fifth cousins, both being great-great-great-great-grandchildren of Prince Karl Ludwig of Baden (1755-1801) and Princess Amalia of Hesse-Darmstadt (1754-1832).

Among Karl Ludwig and Amalia's children were Caroline and Wilhelmina. Hesse was a Protestant family, but Caroline married the Catholic King Maximilian I of Bavaria, and so her descendants are Catholics.

Caroline and Maximilian were the parents of Princess Amalia of Bavaria, mother of King Georg I of Saxony, father of Princess Maria Josepha of Saxony, mother of Emperor Karl I of Austria-Hungary, father of Archduke Otto of Austria.

Wilhelmina and her husband Grand Duke Ludwig II of Hesse were the parents of Princess Maria of Hesse (who married Tsar Alexander II), mother of Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia, father of Grand Duchess Helen of Russia, mother of Princess Olga of Greece, mother of Princess Elisabeth of Yugoslavia.

This would of course be easier to explain with a family tree but I don't know how to do that on FR. I can provide more details (on this or any other royal genealogical topic) if you like.

[wardaddy]

Catherine dated Kerry in the 80s...drats...wish I had not discovered that.