Serbian Polls To Decide if Country's Future Will be European

Will Serbia take a step towards the EU?

Serbians vote Sunday for a new government in polls pitting pro-western and ultra-nationalist forces against each other. The West says Serbia must now decide if it wants its future to be European.

Taking advantage of unseasonably warm winter weather, voters began trickling in to some of the more than 8,500 polling stations across the Balkan nation, including Serbs in ethnic-Albanian dominated Kosovo.

Serbia's 6.6 million electorate, which excludes ethnic Albanians in its disputed southern province, is voting for 250 parliamentary deputies from 20 political groups.

Serbia's EU membership hopes at stake

At stake is Serbia's hope of eventual European Union membership, which hinges on Belgrade's war crimes cooperation, namely by capturing former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, who is wanted for genocide.

Ratko Mladic remains a sticking point between the West and Serbia

Brussels froze talks on closer ties last year and said it would restart them only when Mladic was on trial.

Some Western officials accuse hardline nationalists in Serbia's military and police of helping Mladic to hide and evade trial by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

"We sincerely hope the voters will turn out in large numbers and choose a European future for their country," said British ambassador Steven Wordsworth.

German ambassador Andreas Zobel said the elections "are of an extraordinary importance because they will determine the direction in which Serbia wishes to develop."

The parliamentary elections come the year after the death of former autocratic president Slobodan Milosevic and the independence of Serbia's traditional partner Montenegro in a historic referendum.

"Uncertain" outcome

The decisive race is expected to be between President Boris Tadic's reformist Democratic Party (DS), the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS), and conservative Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS).

"These elections are a turning point between the past, old-fashioned, traditional and incapable politics and a strategy which solves problems ... and leads Serbia to the EU," Tadic said during campaigning.

Official poll monitors, the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy (CeSID), said they believed the outcome of the election was one of the most "uncertain" in the country's history.

"There are some 250,000 new voters (since 2003 elections) and their ballots can be decisive as they are expected to vote for reformist forces," the head of CeSID, Zoran Lucic, said ahead of voting.

Opinion polls have shown none of the three leading parties are likely to win enough votes to form a government alone, with Tadic and Kostunica widely expected to put old differences behind them and join ranks in a coalition.

Fate of Kosovo

The election is set to have a strong bearing on Kosovo, the UN-run province of Serbia that remains the most sensitive issue left over from the bloody 1990s breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

It comes just five days ahead of the presentation of UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari's plans for the status of Kosovo, the ethnic-Albanian majority province of Serbia that has been run by the United Nations since 1999.

Ahtisaari, who led nine months of mostly fruitless talks between Belgrade and Pristina last year, chose to present his plans after the poll for fear it could boost the ultra-nationalists.

Merkel with Serbian President Tadic in Berlin in Dec. 2006

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country heads the EU's six-month rotating presidency, said in an interview with news agency Reuters this week that any decision on Kosovo must bring "maximum" satisfaction to the citizens of the province without stirring unrest in Serbia.

"We need maximum satisfaction in Kosovo but also satisfaction, or at least no turbulence, in Serbia," Merkel said ahead of Sunday's Serbian elections. "First we want to see the democratic powers in Serbia strengthened after the election and then we will do everything we can to negotiate astutely while still moving ahead with political decisions."

Ethnic Albanians, who comprise about 90 percent of Kosovo's two million people, want nothing less than independence, a demand Belgrade staunchly opposes, instead offering them wide autonomy.

The major parties say they will not accept the loss of Kosovo, but the Democratic Party of President Boris Tadic -- the party favored by the West -- has come closest to telling Serbs that it might be inevitable.

Jaded voters

Despite the importance of the poll, a large number of voters are expected to abstain, fed up with politics and Serbia's protracted transition from communism, which has been delayed by the wars of the 1990s and their aftermath.

More than six years since the ouster of former strongman Milosevic, the impoverished country lags behind its neighbours with an average monthly salary of about 250 euros ($320) and about one million unemployed.

Some 500 international and 5,000 local observers were monitoring the vote. Unofficial preliminary results were expected late Sunday, while the final outcome is to be presented by January 25.

Serbs vote for a new Parliament

BELGRADE: Serbs voted Sunday in a closely contested parliamentary election between pro-Western democrats and nationalists to determine whether the Balkan nation drifts toward mainstream Europe or returns to its wartime nationalist past.



The vote was the first since the breakup of Serbia's union last year with Montenegro, its last partner from the former Yugoslavia, which split up in the 1990s. Turnout was about 46 percent in the first 10 hours of voting, according to Cesid, an independent Serbian polling group, indicating strong interest among the electorate of 6.6 million. Parties must receive a minimum 5 percent of the vote to enter the 250-seat Parliament.



Shortly after the vote, a United Nations plan for the future of Serbia's breakaway Kosovo province is expected to be published. Many in the West fear that Europe could face a crisis if the nationalist Serbian Radical Party emerges as the outright winner Sunday and the UN plan calls for the independence of Kosovo.



"We will win and make sure that Kosovo remains part of Serbia," Tomislav Nikolic, leader of the Radicals, said Sunday after he cast his ballot.



Challenging the Radicals in the vote were the Western-backed Democratic Party of President Boris Tadic and the center-right Popular Coalition, led by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.

Tadic and Kostunica have lobbied internationally to keep Kosovo within Serbia, offering broad autonomy to its majority ethnic Albanians, who are insisting on full independence. Unlike the Radicals, Tadic and Kostunica have pledged to resolve the Kosovo crisis by peaceful means.

Kosovo has been an international protectorate since the 1998-99 war between Serbian troops and separatist ethnic Albanians.

Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president who is overseeing talks on the future of the region, is expected to present a proposal for Kosovo's future to diplomats on Friday that many say will include some sort of conditional independence.

None of the top three groups in the vote Sunday was likely to win an outright majority to govern alone, surveys have shown. Analysts have predicted that a new cabinet could be a coalition of Tadic's and Kostunica's parties, possibly backed by a few groups representing ethnic minorities.

But Kostunica, who headed Serbia's government over the past three years, has not ruled out forming a coalition with the Radicals in order to stay in power.

Tadic said Sunday that his Democrats would win most votes "but will not be able to form a government alone."




 

Serbs Vote in Key Parliamentary Election

Serbs voted Sunday in parliamentary elections closely watched by European Union leaders hoping the troubled Balkan nation will keep pursuing Western-style reforms and a peaceful solution to the dispute over Kosovo.


The vote was the first since Serbia became independent last year with the end to its union with Montenegro, its last partner from the former Yugoslav federation. Soon after the vote, a U.N. plan for the future of Serbia's breakaway Kosovo province is expected to be proposed.


More than 6.6 million voters were choosing among 20 political parties, ranging from ultranationalists and conservatives to pro-Western reformists and liberals. Parties must get a minimum 5 percent of the total vote to earn a place in the 250-member parliament.


Nearly 57 percent of registered voters had cast ballots one hour before polls closed, said CeSID, an independent Serbian polling group, indicating a strong interest among the electorate.


Challenges facing the next parliament and government include Western demands for the arrest of war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic and the dispute over Kosovo, where a predominantly ethnic Albanian population seeks independence over the strong opposition of most Serbs.


Opinion polls indicated the vote would be a close race between the nationalist Serbian Radical Party, loyal to late ex-leader Slobodan Milosevic, and the Western-backed Democratic Party of President Boris Tadic.


But neither of the two groups was expected to win an outright majority, forcing them to partner with smaller parties to form a governing coalition.


Ranking third in recent polls was the center-right Popular Coalition, led by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica. In campaigning, he navigated a central course, advocating EU integration but refusing to denounce Milosevic-era parties. He has pursued Western-advised reforms but failed to arrest Mladic.


Tadic has pledged that a government led by his Democrats would work harder to arrest the fugitive.


The elections came a day before talks between EU foreign ministers in Brussels where Kosovo was to top the agenda. The 27-nation bloc will look closely at elections' results, hoping that pro-Western parties will win and push ahead with democratic and economic reforms and fully cooperate with the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.


German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and other EU officials said last week that stability in the Balkans was a priority, including working closely with Belgrade to find a peaceful solution to Kosovo's status.


On Friday, U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari is expected to present a proposal that will include some sort of conditional independence for the province, which has been an international protectorate since the 1998-99 war between Milosevic's troops and separatist ethnic Albanians.


Tadic and Kostunica have lobbied internationally to keep Kosovo within Serbia, offering broad autonomy to its ethnic Albanians. The two have pledged to resolve the Kosovo crisis peacefully, a promise the Radicals have refused to make.


``We will win and make sure that Kosovo remains part of Serbia,'' Serbian Radical Party leader Tomislav Nikolic said Sunday.

Could this be the final chapter in the life of the book

 The world's libraries are heading for the internet, says Bryan Appleyard. If this means we lose touch with real books and treat their content as 'information', civilisation is the loser


‘The majority of information,” said Jens Redmer, director of Google Book Search in Europe, “lies outside the internet.”

Redmer was speaking last week at Unbound, an invitation-only conference at the New York Public Library (NYPL). It was a groovy, bleeding-edge-of-the-internet kind of affair. There was Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine and author of The Long Tail, a book about the new business economics of the net. There was Arianna Huffington, grand panjandrum of both the blogosphere and smart East Coast society.



But this wasn’t just another jolly. There were also publishers and Google execs, two groups of people who might one day soon be fighting for their professional lives before the Supreme Court.

For Unbound was another move in a strange, complex and frequently obscure war that is being fought over the digitisation of the great libraries of the world. The details of this war may seem baffling, but there is nothing baffling about what is at stake. Intellectual property — intangibles like ideas, knowledge and information — is, in the globalised world, the most valuable of all assets. China may be booming on the basis of manufacturing, but, overwhelmingly, it makes things invented and designed in the West or Japan. Intellectual property is the big difference between the developing and developed worlds.

But intellectual property rights and the internet are uneasy bedfellows. Google’s stated mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. The words “universally accessible” carry the implicit threat that nobody can actually own or earn revenue from any information since it will all be just out there.

Furthermore, Redmer’s point indicates that, for Google, the mission has barely left base camp. Himalayas of information are still waiting to be conquered. And the highest peaks of all are the great libraries of the world, the repositories of the 100m or more books that have been produced since Johann Gutenberg invented movable type in the 15th century.

In December 2004, Google announced its assault on these peaks. It had made a deal with five libraries — with the NYPL and at the universities of Stanford, Harvard, Michigan and Oxford — to scan their stocks, making their contents available online via Google Book Search (books.google.com). Ultimately, it is thought, some 30m volumes will be involved. Microsoft, meanwhile, has made a deal with the British Library to scan 100,000 books — 25m pages — this year alone. Google has now scanned 1m books.

The first thing to be said is that Google Book Search, though still in its “beta” or unfinalised form, is an astonishing mechanism. Putting my own name in came up with 626 references and gave me immediate access to passages containing my name in books, most of which were quite unknown to me. Moreover, clicking on one of these references brings up an image of the actual page in question.

But the second thing to be said is that I could read whole passages of my books of which I own the copyright. At once a huge intellectual property issue looms. The Americans are ploughing ahead with this, scanning in material both in and out of copyright. The British — at Oxford’s Bodleian Library and the British Library — are being more cautious, allowing only the scanning of out-of-copyright books. This may, of course, mean nothing, since the big American libraries will, like the Bodleian and the British Library, contain every book published in English, so they will all ultimately be out there on the net.

American publishers are not happy. Before its 2004 announcement, Google had been doing deals with individual publishers to scan their books. But digitising the libraries would seem to render these deals defunct. Furthermore, since Google is acquiring copyright material at no cost, it seems to be treating books quite differently from all other media. It is prepared to pay for video and music, but not, apparently, for books. The Google defence is that their Book Search system is covered by the legal concept of “fair dealing”. No more than 20% of a copyright book will be available, the search is designed to show just relevant passages, and it will provide links to sites where the book can be bought.

Unimpressed, the Authors Guild, supported by the Association of American Publishers, has started a class action suit against Google. A deal may yet be done, but neither side sounds in a compromising mood, and it looks likely that this will go all the way to the Supreme Court, whose ruling on this case may prove momentous.

But still, we are only in the foothills of the library digitisation issue. When Google made its 2004 announcement, Jean-Noël Jeanneney, president of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, experienced “neither distress nor irritation at the project. Just a healthy jolt”. He welcomed the idea that “a treasure trove of knowledge, accumulated for centuries, would be opened up to the benefit of all,” but he was also “seized by anxiety”. Driven by this anxiety, he wrote a short book, Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge.

Though he declines to talk of “a crusade or a cultural war”, the book is a clear case of “aux armes, citoyens!” The citizens in question are, in this case, European rather than just French, for Jeanneney sees the Google project as an act of American cultural hegemony. He has won the backing of Chirac for a project to develop a European search engine to rival Google, the so-called “Airbus solution” — the creation of Airbus was a deliberate attempt to combat the ascendancy of Boeing in aircraft manufacture.

Jeanneney says that Google is not what it seems. Its search results are biased by commercial and cultural pressures. He has a point. Try this: go to Google Book Search and enter Gustave Flaubert. The first results are full of English translations of Madame Bovary.

The books of the English-speaking world are given overwhelming priority. Equally, Google’s main search engine produces paid-for sites. Google is a profit machine. Nothing wrong with that, as long as we don’t delude ourselves into thinking it is an entirely neutral source of information.

But there are even deeper issues revolving around the distinction between information and knowledge. “A search engine,” says John Sutherland, professor of English at UCL, “is not an index.”



An index is the work of a mind with knowledge, search engine results are the product of an algorithm with information. Parents will already have seen the power of the algorithm. Google has supplanted the textbook as the source of homework research.

Furthermore, with the advance of library digitisation, students will increasingly get through their degrees on screen rather than in libraries. Indeed, Bill Gates expects in the very near future that Microsoft will be able to give all undergraduates a $400 hand-held device that will contain all the text books they need for their course. We are, it seems, about to lose physical contact with books, the primary experience and foundation of civilisation for the last 500 years.

Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, refuses to see this in apocalyptic terms. With 100,000 of her books being scanned by Microsoft this year, she regards the ultimate digitisation of the library’s entire 150m-item collection (journals included) as “a wonderful outcome, though I suspect I’ll be long dead by then”.

Brindley disagrees with Jeanneney about having to fight off American hegemony. She points out that search engines are still in their infancy. Google has competitors that are bound to eat into its monopoly. Furthermore, improved technologies will make search results more like indexes, working more precisely as knowledge providers than simple information dispensers. The British Library has no choice, she believes, but to go with this technological flow. The alternative is to become little more than “a book museum”.

Back at the NYPL, David Worlock of Electronic Publishing Services said, “Ultimately it’s not up to Google or the publishers to decide how books will be read.


It’s the readers who will have the final say.”

No, it is the teachers who will have the final say. They will determine whether people will read for information, knowledge or, ultimately, wisdom. If they fail and their pupils read only for information, then we are in deep trouble. For the net doesn’t educate and the mind must be primed to deal with its informational deluge. On that priming depends the future of civilisation. How we handle the digitising of the libraries will determine who we are to become.