September 13, 2000. Copyright 2000. Graphic News. All rights reserved.

FRAUD FEARS OVER YUGOSLAV PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

LONDON, September 13, Graphic News: SERBIAÕS main opposition candidate enjoys a wide lead in opinion polls over embattled Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, posing the most serious challenge so far to MilosevicÕs 10-year rule.

But according to a senior European official, the world should have no illusions that  Milosevic will give up his grip on power -- even if he loses the September 24 Yugoslav presidential election.

ÒHe cannot afford to lose,Ó Lord Russell-Johnston, who chairs the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, told a two-day gathering of European parliamentarians in the Croatian capital Zagreb. ÒWe should harbour no illusions of Milosevic playing fair. His immense machinery of repression is warming up and ready to intervene, if the vote of frustration and indignation is too huge to be reversed through fraud,Ó Johnston said.

MilosevicÕs chief adversary, Vojislav Kostunica, a joint candidate of the 18-party Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) bloc, says he is confident of victory.

ÒEven more than the positive poll results, IÕm happy about the general mood in the population. It encourages me and confirms the empirical figures,Ó said Kostunica.

ÒThe only thing that really concerns me is a blatant attempt at election fraud, because neither my party nor I have any control over what goes on in the south of the country or Montenegro,Ó he added.

An opinion poll published by the Institute for Social Sciences showed 52 percent would vote for Kostunica against 31 percent for Milosevic.

It said that the leftist coalition of MilosevicÕs Socialist Party and the Yugoslav Left (JUL) party led by his wife, Mirjana Markovic, would get 20 percent of the votes in the parliamentary polls against 41 percent for DOS.

The two other parties contesting the elections -- the ultra-nationalist Radical Party and the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement -- would get six and five percent respectively.

Milosevic called parliamentary and presidential elections for the Yugoslav federation, comprising Serbia and Montenegro, after pushing through constitutional changes that effectively enabled him to run for a third term in office.

The Western-leaning Montenegrin leadership has said it will boycott the vote but pledged not to interfere with voting inside Montenegro, where pro-Milosevic opposition parties intend to run.

Western leaders have repeatedly voiced the hope that the poll would bring about democratic changes in the ostracized Balkan country by unseating Milosevic, indicted for suspected war crimes by his forces in Kosovo and blamed for a decade of conflict in the Balkans.
/ENDS
Sources: Reuters, Associated Press