BELGRADE: Serbia again finds itself at the crossroads ahead of an election that threatens to install a president who is a former ally of war-time leader Slobodan Milosevic, analysts said on Friday.

More than seven years since the ouster of the former strongman in a popular uprising, Sunday’s presidential runoff pits ultra-nationalist challenger Tomislav Nikolic against pro-Western incumbent Boris Tadic.

As two days’ of campaigning silence kicked in overnight, voters left to choose between the two rivals are deeply divided, according to opinion pollsters who say the race is too close to call.

“It’s like deja vu, almost a referendum on the future of this nation, like in 2000,” economic analyst Branko Pavlovic said.

In 2000, Tadic was a member of a coalition which led a popular uprising that toppled Milosevic after the autocratic ruler refused to recognise defeat at presidential elections.

For many, Nikolic, whose Radical Party was allied with Milosevic, is a symbol of the 1990s, when Serbia was a pariah state tarnished by its role in the wars that shattered Yugoslavia.

Although pollsters give a slight advantage to Tadic, “it is possible that several thousand votes could decide the outcome of the elections”, said Pavlovic.

Political analyst Miljenko Dereta said Sunday’s election for a new head of state was more than a “referendum” on whether or not citizens were for European integration.

“We are deciding on the future of several generations of our citizens,” Dereta said.

“This is a crucial moment to draw the line of division from the politics aimed at the total destruction of Serbia, and those leading the country to its natural environment, Europe.” Another analyst, Sonja Liht, said the alternative to Europe and development could be only “stagnation and regress”. If voters opt to give Nikolic a five-year term, Liht said she was “afraid it would be a national catastrophe ... that could make Serbia isolated” from the most of the world.

Goran Svilanovic, foreign minister in the first post-Milosevic government, said, however, that not all of Nikolic’s supporters could be considered “ultra-nationalists”.

After Milosevic’s ouster, Serbia’s new leaders launched sweeping reforms meant to drag the country out of decades of mismanagement that crippled the economy along with war-related sanctions. The reforms proved painful, forcing the privatisation or closure of many inefficient state-owned companies.—AFP