Subject: A Milosevic ally backs Kostunica's victory
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 9:40:20 PDT
From: C-afp@... (AFP)
Organization: Copyright 2000 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
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BELGRADE, Sept 28 (AFP) - An ally of President Slobodan
Milosevic added his voice Thursday to opposition calls for the
Yugoslav leader to admit defeat in weekend elections and step down.
Vojislav Seselj, whose Serbian Radical party is allied with
Milosevic's leftist coalition in both the Serbian and federal
Yugoslav governments, said opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica
won the presidential vote on Sunday.
"For us, the elections are over. According to our data,
Kostunica has won in the first round and thus we will not take part
in the run-off," Seselj told reporters here.
According to official results presented by the federal election
commission early Thursday, Kostunica beat Milosevic in the first
round polling but failed to gain the absolute majority needed to
avoid a run-off.
The commission said Kostunica garnered 48.96 percent of the
ballots and Milosevic 38.62 percent.
The commission called the second round for October 8, but
Kostunica's Democratic Opposition of Serbia coalition rejected the
ruling as "a joke" and threatened a general strike and street
protests to back its claim to victory.
"Milosevic can leave power peacefully and with dignity, or he
can leave power in a humiliating way which would be no model for
Serbia," said a statement issued by the party on Thursday.
Seselj insisted that the federal electoral commission has
committed "serious fraud," notably in counting ballots from the
UN-administrated Kosovo province. This echoed opposition claims that
thousands of non-existing votes been sent in from the province.
Seselj said representatives of his party were "expelled"
together with two other non-party members and opposition officials
from the election commission headquarters immediatelly after the
ballot counting started late Sunday.
"All this fully calls into question the regularity of these
elections," Seselj said.
"We are only afraid of bloodshed, that is something we do not
want at all," Seselj said.
He called on "all the officials and state institutions to
respect electoral laws."
The SRS is a coalition partner in both the Serbian and federal
Yugoslav governments of Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS)
and the Yugoslav Left (JUL) group headed by his wife Mira Markovic.
But relations between Seselj and the Milosevic parties seriously
deteriorated during the recent election campaign.
Seselj's party fared poorly in the elections.
Its presidential candidate, Tomislav Nikolic, obtained only 5.1
percent of the vote, while the party obtained only three seats in
the lower chamber of the parliament, and two seats in the upper
chamber, according to unofficial results.