Small parties still have "great blackmailing potential"

Surveys show that even after new elections, the two biggest parties in Serbia, DS and SNS, would not be able to form a new government on their own. The Srebrenica resolution was the last in a number of examples that shows that the ruling Democratic Party (DS) needs smaller parties in order to secure a parliamentary majority, Belgrade daily Politika writes. Small parties still have "great blackmailing potential" CeSID Program Director Zoran Lucic said that small parties will still have a "great blackmailing potential" after the next elections. Ruling coalition member United Serbia (JS), led by Dragan Markovic Palma, insisted that it would not vote for the Srebrenica declaration, if another resolution, condemning crimes committed against Serbs, did not accompany it. PUPS, which, like JS, is allied with the Socialists (SPS), called for the work “genocide” to be left out of the resolution in order to give support, and the coalition that they belong to had to "fulfil their requests in some way", writes the newspaper. According to public relations expert Cvijetin Milivojevic, DS is behaving like a "gentle dolphin carrying many parasite-fish on its back" – parties that cannot pass or even get close to the census on their own. He told the daily that the fact that DS won’t work with opposition SNS, SRS or DSS parties, but can work with Sandzak nationalists, United Serbia nationalists who spawned from Zeljko Raznatovic aka Arkan's party, minority parties that are nationalistic by nature, is confusing even the greatest supporters of the Democrats. “What DS has been doing for two years, and promises to do for the rest of its mandate, is practically a job that is self-damaging. In that way, DS is straying from its program and ideology and the foundations of its political message,” Milivojevic said. According to public surveys, the rating of the two largest parties, DS and the opposition SNS, is a total of 65 percent, so neither can form a government on their own and will need smaller parties to participate. Lucic noted that the Democrats would not have won the last elections, if they had not gathered a pre-election coalition around them. He said that there will be no decrease of parties participating in the government in the near future. “A party that brings in even two percent of votes is important, because one vote in the parliament could be crucial. There will always be smaller parties that will make deals and there will always be problems with them. That is the plot of this election system where despite the dominance of two parties there are also smaller ones,” Lucic said.

Small parties still have "great blackmailing potential"

CeSID Program Director Zoran Lučić said that small parties will still have a "great blackmailing potential" after the next elections.

Ruling coalition member United Serbia (JS), led by Dragan Marković Palma, insisted that it would not vote for the Srebrenica declaration, if another resolution, condemning crimes committed against Serbs, did not accompany it.

PUPS, which, like JS, is allied with the Socialists (SPS), called for the work “genocide” to be left out of the resolution in order to give support, and the coalition that they belong to had to "fulfil their requests in some way", writes the newspaper.

According to public relations expert Cvijetin Milivojević, DS is behaving like a "gentle dolphin carrying many parasite-fish on its back" – parties that cannot pass or even get close to the census on their own.

He told the daily that the fact that DS won’t work with opposition SNS, SRS or DSS parties, but can work with Sandžak nationalists, United Serbia nationalists who spawned from Željko Ražnatović aka Arkan's party, minority parties that are nationalistic by nature, is confusing even the greatest supporters of the Democrats.

“What DS has been doing for two years, and promises to do for the rest of its mandate, is practically a job that is self-damaging. In that way, DS is straying from its program and ideology and the foundations of its political message,” Milivojević said.

According to public surveys, the rating of the two largest parties, DS and the opposition SNS, is a total of 65 percent, so neither can form a government on their own and will need smaller parties to participate.

Lučić noted that the Democrats would not have won the last elections, if they had not gathered a pre-election coalition around them. He said that there will be no decrease of parties participating in the government in the near future.

“A party that brings in even two percent of votes is important, because one vote in the parliament could be crucial. There will always be smaller parties that will make deals and there will always be problems with them. That is the plot of this election system where despite the dominance of two parties there are also smaller ones,” Lučić said.