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Gergolet, Mara
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5 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.
A new reality in Kosovo
Elections took place in Kosovo on Sunday for the first time since the country's declaration of independence. Serbs in Kosovo have begun to recognise the new state, writes the liberal conservative daily Corriere della Sera: "With its first and consequently 'historic' local elections held in 36 communities, Kosovo has taken another step in consolidating its democracy. ... But the Kosovo of yore has not gone away, with the same protagonists and the same problems. And relations between Albanians ... and Serbs ... have not improved in the least. .. For Belgrade Kosovo simply doesn't exist, and consequently the same goes for yesterday's elections. Serbian President Boris Tadić, the Serbian political establishment and the Church all called on the Kosovan Serbs not to go to the polls. And yet, of the 100,000 Serbs living in the country - just as many fled the country - not everyone heeded this call. ... The myth of the total boycott among Kosovan Serbs has been broken for the first time."
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More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » Elections, » Serbia, » Kosovo
Making a mockery of the world
Radovan Karadžić is mocking the world by failing to appear for his trial, the liberal-conservative Italian daily Corriere della Sera writes: "Karadžić is a pathological liar. This is how the writer Marko Vešović, who was once his friend, describes him. A poet among psychiatrists, a psychiatrist among poets [Radovan Karadžić worked as a psychiatrist and wrote nursery rhymes] who is pursuing a clear strategy: to turn the trial into a farce and make it seem unreal and fictitious, as if the snipers of Sarajevo and their 14,000 victims were pure invention. This is one of his perfect lies that may still seem real to the odd nostalgic, but not to the judges."
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More from the press review on the subject » Europe, » Serbia
German Social Democrats divided
The German Social Democratic Party (SPD), part of the ruling coalition with the conservative CDU, is deeply divided: the chairman of the party in the state of Hesse, Andrea Ypsilanti, hopes to become premier with the support of the controversial Die Linke (The Left) party. As a result Wolfgang Clement, a former economics minister and deputy chairman of the SPD, has advised against voting for his own party in the state elections, a move for which he is now threatened with expulsion. Even if the attempt to expel him from his party fails, writes the Corriere della Sera, "it will be far more difficult to overcome the breach that this surreal procedure has sparked. The party is divided. On the one hand is the old guard from the days under Gerhard Schröder, who support Clement and the party's 2010 reform agenda. On the other is the impatient new radical wing. What is at stake is the leadership of the party and the ultimate verdict on the Schröder era. ... Andrea Ypsilanti has broken a taboo. She established contacts with Die Linke against the wishes of her party, and hopes with their support to oust the conservatives and become state premier. That would indeed be an earthquake for German politics and for the SPD."
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More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » Social movements, » Germany
Government crisis in Austria
Austria's governing coalition between the conservative ÖVP and the social democratic SPÖ has collapsed just a year and a half after it was formed. According to daily Corriere della Sera, the right-wing populists stand to gain from the situation: "The government crisis was triggered when Alfred Gusenbauer, leader of the Social Democrats, corrected the pro-European course of his party and threatened to hold a referendum on any changes to the Treaty of Lisbon and on Turkish EU membership in an interview with the Kronenzeitung newspaper, a platform for EU-phobia. ... The ÖVP responded promptly by dissolving the coalition. The suspicion voiced by ÖVP leader Wilhelm Molterer that the Chancellor is trying to capitalise on Euroscepticism to counter his own unpopularity is not entirely unjustified. The fierce reaction of the ÖVP towards the anti-EU stance has also sparked a revolt against the Chancellor within his own party. ... The true winner of the situation is the party founded and then abandoned by Jörg Haider, the [right-wing populist] FPÖ, which is at 20 percent and gains terrain and clout whenever there is a crisis."
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More from the press review on the subject » EU Policy, » Domestic Policy, » Austria
Presidential elections in Serbia
"After all these years, we are still at square one: how to get rid of the legacy left by [Slobodan] Milosevic?", comments the political analyst Bratislav Grubacic in an interview conducted by Mara Gergolet. "We have inherited so many disastrous things - corruption, an economical debacle, international isolation - that no government has managed a real transition. ... They [the radicals] are anti-establishment, Eurosceptic extremists. This is a phenomenon of dissent common in numerous eastern European countries. ... All this is the result of the war in the Balkans. It has not always been easy to understand who won and who lost. Take the case of Kosovo: nobody explained to the Serbs that hey had lost this war."
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More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » EU Policy, » Serbia
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