 Montenegro voted yesterday by a comfortable majority to split with Serbia and establish a new small independent state in the Balkans, killing off what remains of Yugoslavia. In a referendum that attracted a turnout of almost 90%, much higher than at any election since democracy arrived in 1990, voters decided by a majority of 56% to 44% to opt for independence rather than a creaking dysfunctional union with Serbia, according to a projection by an independent monitoring organisation last night.
| Another League of Nations holdover bites the dust... |
The Centre for Monitoring estimated the vote for independence at 56.3%. The separatist camp of the country's prime minister and former president, Milo Djukanovic, instantly started celebrating with fireworks and gun sex gunfire on the streets of Podgorica, the Montenegrin capital, leading to warnings from the opposition pro-Serbia unionist side.
| "We have urges, too, y'know. You wouldn't like us when we're aroused!" |
The verbal clashes suggested that more serious trouble might be brewing.
| Comes as a surprise, huh? |
"It's a preliminary estimate, but I don't expect it to change seriously," said Marko Blagojevic, the head of the polling organisation. "We haven't been wrong in Montenegro yet." The official results are expected today. If, as expected, the prediction is confirmed, it will establish a new small state in the Balkans and leave a shrunken Serbia nursing intense grievances from 15 years of Yugoslav disintegration.
| Serbs nursing intense grievences, now where have we heard that before? |
But while the margin of victory appeared solid, the projection was close enough to the threshold set by the EU to make a dispute over the outcome almost inevitable.
The leader of the pro-Serbia unionist side, Predrag Bulatovic, refused to concede defeat and talked of "destabilisation" and "tricks."
| "We lost. That means they cheated." |
Tensions have been running high in the small highland republic between independence-seekers and the pro-Serbia unionist camp, although there were high hopes that the separation of Montenegro from the rump Yugoslavia could turn out to be a peaceful, if fraught, process, in contrast to the bloodshed which accompanied the independence campaigns of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo in the wars of the 1990s.
| If history is any judge, I'd say....no |
| I thought Slovenia broke off peacefully? Somebody told me they just stopped answering the phone from Belgrade one day... |
| ... they had a two-day war, as I recall, then the Serbs realized that their supply route to Slovenia ran through Croatia, and that wasn't a smart move ... |
In the run-up to yesterday's vote, the tensions between Serbia and Montenegro were such that they could not agree on a common entrant for Saturday's Eurovision song contest in Athens, and pulled out. Both republics are, however, fielding a common side at the World Cup in Germany next month, meaning that the football festival will be Yugoslavia's swansong. Controversial terms set for the referendum by Brussels meant that the independence-seekers had to take 55% of the vote for the outcome to be recognised by the EU.
| Last I looked, 56% was greater than 55%... |
The vote was heavily monitored by international observers, making ballot-rigging less likely. But Mr Bulatovic complained: "Such a crucial decision [independence] must not be carried out by a trick." He demanded that the government call off victory celebrations.
| "Stop that gun sex, dammit!" |
Serbs outnumber Montenegrins nine to one in the loose union set up three years ago on the insistence of the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana. The Montenegrin government reluctantly assented to the union on condition that yesterday's referendum would be held.
The solid yes vote for independence, restoring the Montenegrin statehood abolished by the great powers at the end of the first world war when the kingdom of Yugoslavia was formed from the ruins of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires, will reverberate across the Balkans, most notably in its core state, Serbia, where the nationalist government of the prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, has been seeking to prevent the Montenegrin secession.
Montenegrin independence will confirm Serbia as the big loser of Yugoslavia's disintegration. It fought four wars to maximise its hold on as much as possible of former Yugoslavia as a Greater Serbia, but is emerging with nothing but core Serbia. Negotiations under way in Vienna are expected to result in Serbia's loss of its Albanian-majority southern province of Kosovo. | I'm sure that will go smoothly, not! |
"Serbia can only watch as the scales tip one way or the other," the analyst Bosko Jaksic said in a commentary in the Belgrade daily Politika yesterday. "Maybe it's time to bury the past."
Belgrade liberals agree and argue that the departure of Montenegro and Kosovo will enable Serbia to concentrate on reforms and domestic rebuilding after 15 years of disaster, wars, and misgovernment. But nationalists in power in Belgrade see Montenegro and Kosovo as fundamental parts of Serbia and are unreconciled to their loss. | And nobody, but nobody, holds a grudge like a Serb. They can give muslims lessons in seething and Dire Revenge |
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