Serbia votes for new-era head of state
( 2002-09-30 09:55 ) (7 )

Serbs began voting for a new head of state Sunday in their first nationwide election of the post-Milosevic era.

About 6.5 million people are entitled to cast ballots in the two-stage race, which is expected to narrow down from 11 candidates to two of the reformists who helped oust former strongman Slobodan Milosevic two years ago.

Diverging ideas of the right pace of change to impose on the war-impoverished country were a central theme of the campaign.

Pollsters predict Yugoslavia's President Vojislav Kostunica and its Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus will qualify for the run-off in two weeks. Kostunica is then tipped to win.

The Yugoslav federation is to end later this year, giving way to a looser union between its only two remaining constituent republics, Serbia and Montenegro.

Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. (0500 GMT) in murky weather and were due to close at 8 p.m. A local monitoring agency was expected to provide a reliable projection of the results around two hours later.

In contrast to the election which Milosevic lost two years ago, there were very few voters queueing before opening time at one central Belgrade polling station.

Current Serbian President Milan Milutinovic completes his five-year term at the end of this year. The last remnant of Milosevic's regime still in high office, he is expected to join his former patron at the U.N. war crimes court which has indicted him for atrocities committed in Kosovo.

KOSOVO'S ISOLATED SERBS VOTE

"I don't expect much from the new president, but I've had enough of what we've got now," 60-year-old Gradimir said. "I did not vote for Labus, because we've had enough of this."

A 63-year-old pensioner said she voted for Labus but then began to weep and admitted in a whisper that she and her husband had marked her ballot for Vojislav Seselj, the hardline Serbian nationalist who was running third in poll forecasts.

"They just keep talking and making promises. But life hasn't improved for anyone, it's just getting worse. We've all had enough of this," she said.

Conditions were most difficult for voters in the province of Kosovo, under U.N. rule since NATO's 1999 bombing campaign to end Serb repression of the ethnic Albanian majority.

Most Kosovo Serbs live in heavily guarded enclaves with little freedom of movement. Albanians, who want independence for the province, were totally ignoring the vote.

Polls opened quietly and on time in Kosovo's Serb enclave of Gracanica, where one former Milosevic supporter said he had voted for Seselj "because he is the only man who can resolve the Kosovo question."

Kostunica has criticized the liberal economic reforms of the Serbian government, headed by his arch-rival Zoran Djindjic. He has also pledged to establish democratic rule of law in Serbia.

Djindjic is backing Labus, an architect of his economic program. He says the reforms are needed despite short-term pain to overhaul an economy in tatters after decades of communism followed by international isolation.

Kostunica supporters also say Djindjic's crew has no respect for the law and allege links to organized crime.

Kostunica's opponents see him as a respectable front-man for many of the same nationalists who rallied around Milosevic.

Among a colorful cast of other presidential candidates are a former army chief of staff, a veteran film actor and Seselj, who has received the backing of Milosevic from his prison cell in The Hague