The New York Times

Monday, December 6, 1999

A Young Mayor Stands Out in Serbia's Opposition

By CARLOTTA GALL

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- As four European ambassadors shivered on Serbia's southern border last month wrangling with customs over a consignment of heating oil, one vigorous man appeared in his element, installing them in a roadside cafe and ordering glasses of local cognac.

At 39, Zoran Zivkovic, the mayor of Serbia's second city, Nis, is one of the most popular and energetic local leaders in the country. A vice president of the opposition Democratic Party, he has built his career on confrontations with the Belgrade authorities and the government of President Slobodan Milosevic.

POLITICS IN YUGOSLAVIA

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As mayor of Nis, a depressed industrial city in southern Serbia, Zivkovic has little power but plenty of irritation. Belgrade has whittled away local government powers and retains control of the police and the courts, even of hospitals and schools. Zivkovic is left with not much more than utilities, transport and local media.

Helped perhaps by two of the more independent-thinking local television stations in Serbia, he has won respect in his town as a doer who is not tainted by corruption. He is being talked of as a future leader of the Democratic Party, whose grass-roots support could renew Serbs' faith in politicians.

Last week he was constantly on the move, negotiating with the customs authorities daily on the border, driving to Belgrade for an opposition rally, and going back to his hometown to get the heating-plant director out of jail and to address some 4,000 supporters at one of the biggest opposition demonstrations in weeks.

Zivkovic even persuaded members of the Serbian Renewal Movement, the largest opposition party, to join him on stage -- which they have refused to do with the other demonstrations around Serbia against the government.

"He's good; he's a man with a future," said Slobodan Milutinovic, a trader in the crowd. "He's doing his best."

Even a member of the ruling Socialist Party, 60-year-old Vladimir Zaharjasevic, who was attending an exhibition on the NATO bombing campaign across town, had good words for Zivkovic. He blamed Milosevic's government rather than the mayor for the delays that ultimately forced the Europeans to abandon their attempt to deliver heating oil to Nis and a nearby city, Pirot, which is ruled by the opposition.

Zivkovic is one of two men in the Democratic Party, along with Slobodan Vuksanovic, a fellow vice president, who are being mentioned as possible successors to Zoran Djindjic, the party leader who has pledged to step down if he fails to force the government to call early elections.

In a depressed opposition that seems almost constantly engaged in rancorous round-table discussions, Zivkovic stood out last week as a man of action.

Before he joined the party in 1992, he ran an export-import business. He said the frustrations of dealing with the corrupt bureaucrats of Milosevic's government made him decide to join the opposition.

"The Serbian government introduced import licenses, and the procedure involved 10 kilograms of different papers," he said in a recent interview. "I was 32 years old, and I was not prepared to do that for another 40 years.

"I became a member of the Democratic Party, knowing that I would not just be an ordinary member," he went on. In 1993 he won a seat in the Serbian Parliament; in 1994 he was voted one of three vice presidents of the party. In 1996, when an opposition coalition that later disintegrated won all major cities in local elections, he was elected mayor.

During the NATO bombing of Serbia last spring, which hit Nis particularly hard, Zivkovic donned an army uniform and spoke out strongly against the bombing. "All normal people are against the bombing," he said last week.

Yet they are not anti-Western, he said, quoting a recent opinion poll in Nis showing that 60 percent of respondents wanted Serbia to join the European Union and 49 percent supported the idea of Serbia's joining the so-called Partnership for Peace, the waiting room for NATO membership. "Three months after being bombed by NATO, people are for NATO," Zivkovic said.

At the rally last week, there was no doubt of his supporters' feelings. He raised the biggest cheer when he spoke of Serbia's place in Europe. Alluding to the recent friendship that Milosevic and his wife have promoted with the communist rulers of China and President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, he added: "We want average people to travel, go about, do the usual things. We never lived like people in China or Iraq; we used to live like people in Belgium."