Tactics

Early analysis sought to minimize the distress brought on by Tomislav Nikolić's election as presiding officer of the Serbian parliament, stressing that in the likely event that a government is not formed, the parliament would be dissolved on 14 May anyway, and new elections would be called. But today Nikolić proposed an answer to that problem: if a state of emergency could be declared, then no elections would be held. Of course there are many facts that could be interpreted as emergencies: Nikolić proposes the passage of a UN resolution on the independence of Kosovo, and others might suggest that Nikolić himself presents an emergency. Or maybe somebody might burn down the Reichstag.

Where are the strong and who are the trusted

East Ethnia has has taken the liberty of designing a government for SRS, SPS, NS and DSS now that they are on the verge of making public their coalition.

Prime Minister: Tomislav Nikolić (vršilac dužnosti Vojislava Šešelja)

Deputy Prime Minister and kafe-kuhar: Vojislav Koštunica

Minister of Foreign Affairs: Aleksandar Vučić

Minister of the Interior: Svetlana Ražnatović - Ceca

Minister of Justice: Kosta Čavoški

Minister for State Management and Local Self-Government: Dobrivoje Budimirović - Bidža

Minister of Economy: Borka Vučić

Minister of Agriculture: Petar Panić - Pana Banana

Minister of Mines and Energy: Dragan Jugopetrol Tomić

Minister for Capital Investments and Popular Entertainment: Velimir Ilić

Minister of Trade, Tourism and Services: Nemanja Kusturica

Minister for International Economic Relations: Giovanni di Stefano

Minister of Finance: Željko mali Simić

Minister of Labor, Employment and Social Policy: Bratislava Buba Morina

Minister of Health: Borislav Đorđević - Bora Čorba

Minister of Science and Environmental Protection: Aleksandar Popović (nek "oštro krikuje")

Minister of Education and Sport: Radmilo Marojević

Minister of Culture: Goga Sekulić

Minister of Religion: Tomislav Gačić

Minister for the Diaspora: Brana Crnčević

Minister of Transportation: Dejan Mikavica

Minister for Human Rights and Minorities: Goran Davidović

Director of BIA: Ilija Čvorović

Governor of the National Bank: Dafina Milanović

Without a doubt, this government should remind people of the good old days that the members of the coalition want never to end.

Plus ça change, plus c'est Murta

The parliamentary coalition of SRS, SPS, NS and junior partner DSS has agreed to elect Tomislav Nikolić, an entrepreneurial graveyard director from Kragujevac, as president of the Serbian parliament. According to Nikolić, this is not "yet" a new governing coalition. According to DSS spokesperson Miloš Aligrudić, what motivated DSS to finally abandon any pretence of discontinuity with the old regime was the desire to prevent any changes at the interior ministry and the intelligence agencies.

Technocracy

As the weeks drag on from January's elections in Serbia, there is still no governing coalition in sight. SRS got more seats than any other party, but no party will enter into a coalition with it. DSS took a distant third, but cannot countenance the possibility of losing complete control over both the premiership and the "power" ministries. DS leads the pack among the Loose Grouping of Parties That Are Not SRS, but is demanding more than DSS is willing to give. G-17+ is happy just to be there, and LDP is not on anybody's list of coalition partners nor does it want to be.

Today the junior partner of DSS, Velimir Ilić, floated the possibility that everyone has been muttering under their breath since the elections: that DSS and whatever the heck his party is called would try to form a minority government with the support of SRS, which would be handed control over the parliament. It is not as implausible as it sounds, since DSS has experience with governing as a minority with distasteful backbench support, and DSS has more in common with SRS than with its other potential coalition partners. A government of this type would be short-lived, chaotic, and phenomenally unsuccessful, and at the cost of doing lasting damage to the country would have the beneficial side effect of demolishing DSS. A victory worthy of Pyrrhus of Epirus, in the eyes of some.

Naturally, it is not to be. SRS quickly declared that they were not disposed to carry the weight of another party's failure, and Mr Ilić's effort to scare his coalition partners into submission backfired. So now it is back to pretending to carry out negotiations with people he fully intends to stab in the back, and to treating the electorate as though its principal duty is to assure that anybody who once controlled a ministry will always have large quantities of public property at their disposal.