“No rights,” says she “without their duties, No claims on equals without cause.”

The Socialist International will be an oddly named beast indeed if it accepts genocidal parties of the far right as members.

Spodobe na okupu

A ponovo i na vlasti.

A new, unstable, short-lived government

So it looks like they have done it after all. In a move many hail as some kind of victory, DS and SPS have agreed to alienate both their supporters and form a government together. Word is that the prime minister will be the current finance minster Mirko Cvetković, a compromise figure in every respect. As a "nonparty" person, he is more or less acceptable to everyone. As a nonentity, everyone believes they can control him. He may surprise people on that second count.

The new government is set to have 28 ministries, affirming the place of Serbia near the top of the world demographically in ministers per capita.

The good news about the government is that neither Vojislav Koštunica nor Velimir Ilić will be part of it. The bad news is that SPS will be, and once again a party with minor support will excercise inordinate power. What is uncertain is whether SPS will use the opportunity to demonstrate that it has the capacity the become a political party, and also whether DS will use the opportunity to demonstrate that it has the capacity the become a political party.

PS: Backstory? -- Here are journalists speculating in Politika that Tadić was compelled to choose Cvetković by party leaders and that his preference would have been .... Vuk Jeremić????? But how little does one have to respect (even) Tadić to imagine anyone, even him, seeing Vuk Jeremić in any position where something might depend on him?

Tremblez, tyrans et vous perfides

A few people may have been surprised about the gesture yesterday on the part of SRS, DSS and SPS to declare that they have reached an agreement to form a city government for Belgrade. Obviously the symbolic importance of controlling the local government in a city where these parties have never won an election (not this time either) would be hard to overstate.

When symbols are in question, respond with symbols. DS strategist Dragoljub Mićunović rushed to remind people that mayors can be removed by the city assembly, which people in his party have known since 1997. And the head of the assembly hurried to choose a late date for constituting the new assembly: 14 July. The date should be meaningful to the SRS candidate for mayor Aleksandar Vučić (try his delicious squid recipe!), who as information secretary in the Milošević regime controlled the media outlet known to everyone at the time as "TV Bastille."

Udobnost fotelja

It is a fairly hot day in Belgrade, but this will not bother the heads of the DB parties, who will sit in the pleasant shade overlooking the fragrant animals of the Belgrade Zoo and sign an agreement to hand over the city government to SRS. If I had to guess, I would say that it will be a short-lived agreement and will fall apart as soon as the negotiations among the same parties to form a republican government fall apart. The whole business looks as though it was conceived by SPS to increase their blackmail capacity.

But it is entirely possible that SPS is overreaching. Their coalition partners are openly balking at joining forces with parties that want to quash the stabilisation agreement with the EU. And Milutin "pre roka" Mrkonjić has remembered what was no nice about having executive power in an illegal government: the opportunity to interfere with judicial power. So he wants amnesty for the criminals of the old regime as a condition for negotiating at all. A few more conditions like that, and it might be reasonable to expect no government to be formed and new elections to be called in the fall instead.

If new elections were to be called, there is a possibility that somebody might get a majority. There is less patience than ever for parties with a few seats behaving as though they are the majority. Another possibility is that SPS will finally have its long-awaited split, along the lines of the fractures that have become more than apparent in the last two weeks. DSS too.