rfmcdonald | [BRIEF NOTE] Serbia's nice elections news (Reply)

Over the weekend Serbia had its most recent parliamentary elections, and the news is good.

Pro-Western forces in Serbia began tough talks on Monday to cobble together a coalition, after the electoral commission confirmed they scored an upset poll victory over nationalist rivals.

President Boris Tadic's "For a European Serbia" alliance garnered 38.8 percent in Sunday's parliamentary elections dominated by the issue of Serbian ties with the European Union.

While short of an absolute majority, the alliance was well ahead of the ultra-nationalist Radical Party on 29.2 percent, said the commission.

There had been predictions of a possible nationalist backlash over widespread EU support for the independence of Serbia's breakaway province of Kosovo.

In the end, the result "undoubtedly confirmed a clear European path," Tadic said at his Democratic Party campaign headquarters.

"The Democratic Party will be the key player in the future cabinet," said the president, refusing to reveal who might be his prime minister.

"The negotiations will not be easy (but) I warn everyone not to play with the electoral will of the citizens and try to take Serbia back to the isolation of the 1990s," he said in reference to the hardline regime of late president Slobodan Milosevic.

The Democrats' expected coalition partners include the Socialist Party of Serbia, founded by Milosevic, and/or the Liberal Democratic Party, whose leader Cedomir Jovanovic negotiated the late strongman's arrest in 2001.

While it's disturbing that the Radical Party, founded by a man, Vojislav Seselj who is a proponent of eye-gouging, ranks second by popularity in Serbia, it's very good news indeed that the most popular political party in Serbia and the one most likely to form the government is a normal political party. Now Serbia has a fighting chance of catching up to Bulgaria.