Balkan countries between electoral games, repression and public health
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA The seven territories dismembered in the old Yugoslavia by the wars in the 90s present economic and political emergencies in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Elections, censorship and data manipulation play with the lives of millions of people. Serbia leads the accusations still silenced by the press about repression of street protests.
Slovenia was the first European country to declare the end of the coronavirus quarantine on May 15. Croatia decided to open its borders in the first week of May and did not demand quarantine for those who came to the country on a tourist plan. Montenegro was the last country to admit the problems of the Coronavirus pandemic, but it was also the first to emerge from the confinement after the decision of its government back on May 15. Serbia is accused by the foreign press and some local political scientists of not knowing how many infected there are in the country, thanks to the heavy hand of its Prime Minister Aleksander Vucic who was in charge of giving the press reports in person. Bosnia-Herzegovina is experiencing a rise in the rate of infections that responds to the second wave of infections.
These are young countries, politically independent but dependent on the tourism sector to generate income, with few strong industries and where the wounds still opened by the war that destroyed the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s to make them independent nations continue to mark their foreign policies.
All rushed to try to regain a conventional lifestyle despite the World Health Organization (WHO) regional director for Europe, Hans Henri Kluge, warning of a second wave of infections if “the transition to the new normal is not made taking care of the public health protocols generated by the WHO ”.
The organization of the Adria Tour, a tennis tournament devised by the Serbian player Novak Djokovic, generated controversy and was suspended after four players, including Djokovic himself, were infected with coronaviruses.
The tournament was intended to be beneficial to collaborate with the fight against the new plague in Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina, that is to say a good part of the Balkans, but it ended up suspended and on red alert for not having respected any sanitary protocol.
With more than 6,000 cases and almost 300 deaths, Macedonia has experienced a new increase in contagion cases in the last week, so the government established a curfew to avoid contagions by circulation. But Macedonia faces a particular and delicate situation. After an internal political crisis, the government dissolved Parliament in February and set the month for the renewal of legislators in April. Just then, quarantine was established worldwide and the transitional government led by Stevo Pendarovski decided to postpone the elections to July 15. Now the electoral protocols collide with the toilets and the country is at a crossroads as coronavirus cases grow and the electoral date is not in dispute.
Serbia is another example of how the political issue gets involved in health protocols. President Aleksei Vucic has governed the country for eight years and the opposition maintains that he does so with an iron fist and with a controlled press. In March, it imposed a curfew on the country without agreement with Parliament and decided that parliamentary elections be held as scheduled on June 21. Vucic’s ruling party obtained 63 percent of the votes and kept 189 seats out of the 250 that makeup Parliament.
“It was vital for the government to arrive and win the elections because it wanted to negotiate the situation of Kosovo’s independence,” says Mihailo Tesic, a Serbian journalist and editor of Vice magazine in the Balkan country.
Serbia has been trying to join the European Economic Community (EEC) for 10 years, and both Germany and France have warned the Sarajevo government that it must recognize Kosovo’s independence to aspire to integration. Vucic wants to speed up those procedures and has already met with his Russian unemployment Vladimir Putin and plans to do so with the President of Kosovo Hashim Thaci to discuss this issue. He needed elections and confirmation in office to take this step. However, Vucic is also accused of falsifying and hiding the real data of the spread of the pandemic in the country, according to a report by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN).
Demonstrations of Serbian citizens called in different cities by social networks remind us of the so-called Arab Spring between 2010 and 2012 that ended with the governments of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. Although the intensity of the claims is not as intense and the interests of the superpowers are not at stake as in the days of the Arab uprising.
Elections
The presidential and parliamentary elections are also coloured by the effects of the coronavirus. Legislative elections were held in North Macedonia with the Social Democratic party BESA as the winner, which allowed the return to government of former Pirmer Minstro Zoran Zaev.
In Croatia, the legislatures of July 15 were won by the conservative ruling party and its Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic stayed with the parliamentary majority. Politics also uses the Coronavirus in its electoral disputes in a dangerous power game involving public health policies and the lives of millions of people.
In Croatia, the government of President Zoran Milanovic decided to relax controls in May after a drop in infections throughout the country, ready to recover its tourism income. However, in the last week there was a 300 percent increase in cases in just over two days, including 107 deaths. The authorities re-imposed the use of the mask and social distance to prevent infections and included the protocol of keeping quarantine for those who enter the country.
Slovenia and Croatia seemed to have stopped second wave infections but the last few weeks seem to have pierced health protocols again and the infections returned to an upward curve.
With three weeks of July after the evolution of COVID-19 in the Balkan region is as follows:
Slovenia: 1946 contagions / 112 death
Croatia: 4345 contagions / 12 death
Serbia: 20894 contagions / 472 death
Bosnia and Herzegovina: 8340 contagions / 249 death
Montenegro: 2188 contagions / 32 death
North Macedonia: 9153 contagions / 422 death
Kosovo: 5735 contagions / 135 death
The new normality of those countries that hastened, now seems distant.
