DOS-leader Zoran Djindjic will be Serbia’s new prime minister and he will probably need all his remarkable political ability to rebuild his country’s institutions and economy. “My job is not to be popular,” Mr. Djindjic says and in fact he has never been much loved among his country fellows. He left his country in the 70s, after a jail sentence for trying to “destroy the constitutional order” of Marshal Tito’s communist Yugoslavia: he had been trying to form a non-communist student front. He then went to Germany to become a doctor in philosophy, studying under Jürgen Habermas.
When the communist block began to crumble, Djindjic returned to Serbia where he founded the Democratic Party which is now the biggest in the coalition. During the regime of Slobodan Milosevic he quickly emerged as an important opposition leader due to his pragmatic energy and his flair for organization, while his philosophical background and his dislike against authority helped him to avoid the erratic skidding that destroyed the political career of other promising politicians such as Vuk Draskovic.
But it was during the presidential elections of last September, when Zoran Djindjic, now 48, delivered his political masterpiece. Though he could have run for himself as did Draskovic, he stepped aside as a candidate, recognizing that he was not popular enough to challenge Milosevic. He chose Vojislav Kostunica instead and then managed to unite an 18-party coalition around his candidacy. Djindjic was also the most important manager of Kostunica’s campaign, doing his utmost to keep the ramshackle coalition together.
After Kostunica’s victory Djindjic showed even the right mixture of pragmatism and firmness in treating with the remaining Socialists in the institutions. At the same time he never left any doubt that he wanted the former top Serbs put on trial. Their time is now definitely over, but most probably Djindjic will prefer to process them in Serbia, maybe under the eyes of observers from the International Court at the Hague.
