All over the world, millions of people are completely ignoring the U.S. elections. Usually our presidential elections are watched very closely, and the candidates are judged on two issues in particular: support or lack of support for international political and economic bodies (the U.N., the IMF, the World Bank, NATO, etc.) and the candidate's support for military interventionism. International analysts have admitted that on these two issues, Bush and Gore were indistinguishable. Elect one or the other, they simply don't care.

On the other hand, there are two elections that the world has watched very closely: Serbia's and Kosovo's. Vojislav Kostunica narrowly won a majority over Milosevic in Serbia, but not enough votes to win outright (the campaigning was also marred by violence and suppression of the media). Predictably, Milosevic called for a run-off. Kostunica's party quickly parlayed a miners' strike into a general protest calling for Milosevic's ouster. Within a few days, it was over: Milosevic was out and Kostunica was the next president of Yugoslavia.

Those are the facts that we've read in the papers and seen on TV here in the U.S. There's more to the story.

On the day that protesters stormed the parliament building in Belgrade, Milosevic made repeated telephone calls to the army and police, demanding that they break up the demonstrations. Each time, he was given a polite "we're working on it, sir," but the military and police never acted. Kostunica admits that he was approached by high-ranking military and police intelligence officers prior to the election. These men told him that, if he could produce a big enough crowd of protesters in the streets (regardless of the vote totals), they would back him and not Milosevic. This conjures up a vision of Kostunica as the figurehead for a Serbian military coup. Last week Kostunica told the activist wing of his own party that he would not allow any members of the military or police to be investigated for human rights or civil rights abuses during Milosevic's administration.

Kostunica has also been hailed in the west as a great champion of democracy; yet, he poses deep problems for NATO and U.S. goals in the region. He's a rabid nationalist, who has stated that Kosovo will not be an independent state. His election in Serbia has given fuel to the Serbian nationalist movement in Bosnia, which wants to create a separate Serbian homeland in Bosnia to be annexed to a greater, Serbian-run Yugoslavia. Just after gaining office, Kostunica attended the funeral of the ultra-nationalist Bosnian Serb poet Jovan Ducic, the favorite writer of indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic. During this special trip to Bosnia, Kostunica tried to completely bypass the capital of Sarajevo and just visit his nationalist pals. Under pressure from the U.N., however, Kostunica finally gave in and made a brief diplomatic visit via helicopter to Sarajevo to meet the Serb and Muslim leaders of Bosnia's tripartite Croat/Serb/Muslim government. The U.N. is extremely worried that Kostunica will destabilize Bosnia.

The western press recently announced that Kostunica had acknowledged that Serbian troops had committed genocide against Albanians during the NATO bombing of Kosovo and Serbia. This is entirely untrue. During an interview for the CBS TV show 60 Minutes, Kostunica was quoted in the broadcast as saying: "I am ready to ... accept the guilt for all those people who have been killed ... For what Milosevic had done, and as a Serb, I will take responsibility for many of these, these crimes." Note the numerous ellipses. Kostunica's office immediately released a statement saying that the CBS journalists had fabricated the quote and called it "a series of untruths and words which President Kostunica did not use." The journalist who conducted the interview, Scott Pelley, admitted that the story was heavily edited and that he had to ask Kostunica the same questions over and over again to get the answers he wanted.

Young activists in Serbia, many of whom helped to topple Milosevic, are delivering a strong message to Kostunica: "We're watching you." The youth movement, named Otpor (which means "resistance" in Serbian) is composed mostly of students and young workers who have protested Milosevic's government for many years, through times of brutal repression. Over 9,000 Otpor activists were arrested by Serbian police in the past year, but the movement has continued to grow. Buildings, businesses, signs, and shop windows in Belgrade are now covered with Otpor's insignia: a clenched fist. But Otpor is not only an urban movement--it has chapters in rural areas and some of the smallest villages in Serbia.

Otpor is currently preparing actions to warn the new administration not to become just like Milosevic's. Said one Otpor activist: "Until the last thief in Serbia is gone, Otpor will not stop." Unlike the western media, they have no illusions about Kostunica.

Meanwhile, the elections in Kosovo have taken an interesting turn. Albanian Kosovars voted overwhelmingly for Ibrahim Rugova's party over the party run by former leaders of the hard-line Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)--NATO's allies during the bombing campaign. Rugova led a decade-long campaign of peaceful resistance against Belgrade just prior to the civil war initiated by the KLA's campaign of violent struggle. This vote is widely viewed in international circles as a condemnation of the KLA and the NATO bombing campaign.

Sources: "Was Serbian Revolt the People's Alone?" Wall Street Journal, 10/23/00, A25; "Kostunica shows nationalist colours," Manchester Guardian Weekly, 10/26-11/1/00; "Kostunica Disputes CBS Broadcast," AP, 10/31/00; "Yugoslav Activists Issue Warning," AP, 10/19/00; "Kosovo leader wants independence now," BBC News Online, 10/30/00; "Profile: Ibrahim Rugova," BBC News Online, 10/30/00.