“Koštunica to remain prime minister”

“Koštunica to remain prime minister”

“Serbian president and the Democrats’ leader Boris Tadić is not interested in the post of the prime minister,” Blic quoted a party official commenting.

The “power sharing principle” discussed in the talks implies that, should Tadić offer the premiership to his party’s candidate, the DSS would nominate its candidate in the next presidential elections, backed by the DS and G17 Plus.

According to Blic,  the Democrats and the DSS have already come to an understanding over the personnel issues: Koštunica would remain as prime minister, and the DS would be in charge of all major ministries.

Blic’s source explained that Tadić was not interested in taking over as prime minister since the Democrats had doubts over whether Koštunica could beat the Serb Radical Party’s candidate Tomislav Nikolić in the next presidential elections.

“We believe that appeals to our voters to back Koštunica would hardly prove effective. If Nikolić were to win the vote, with Tadić as the prime minister, we would again have to cohabitate - this time with the Radicals. This scenario is unacceptable to Tadić and to the entire Democratic Party”, the source said.

It remains difficult to predict who might become the next Parliament speaker. The DS and G17 Plus both believe they are entitled to the post.

The daily adds that the deal between the two parties also includes postponement of the local and presidential elections for January or February 2008.

The Democrats are said to believe a part of their voters will react negatively to the deal with the DSS, which is why they decided to opt for postponement. The Democrats would want enough time to compensate for the “damage” by resuming the dialogue with the EU and prompting co-operation with The Hague.