Leading up to and following the elections, the Clinton administration has cranked up the pressure to remove Milosevic, having provided massive funding to the opposition forces and reminding the world that the devastating sanctions imposed on Yugoslavia will remain until he has been removed from office.

In response to the demonstrations, Milo-sevic announced a crackdown October 3, ordering the arrest of 13 organizers of a strike at the Kolubara mine, Serbia's largest coal mine. Truckloads of cops and soldiers swarmed into the mine compound after the regime declared the strike threatened electricity service. The cops backed off when up to 20,000 workeing people came to the miners' aid. One bus pushed aside a cop car blocking its way.

The protests were sparked by Milosevic's announcement of plans for a runoff presidential election, scheduled for October 8. On September 26 the nation's federal election commission called for the second round of voting after releasing figures stating that opposition candidate Kostunica failed to win an outright majority, winning 48 percent to 40 percent for Milosevic. Opposition forces declared that Kostunica won the ballot, receiving 54 percent of the vote to 35 percent for Milosevic.

On October 4 Yugoslavia's highest court annulled parts of the September 24 election, posing the possibility of redoing the first-round vote. Kostunica called the decision a "trap."

"They can say whatever they want. But they are defeated--history," said Snjezana, a store clerk in Belgrade. "If we have to defend our victory on the street we'll do that. We've had enough." On October 3 some 40,000 people rallied in the industrial town of Kragujevac to support Kostunica. Earlier protests brought a series of towns to a halt, but failed to have much effect on Belgrade where road blockades have lasted a few hours.

"Milosevic is going down," declared Vuk Obradovic, a former general in the Yugoslav army and now head of the opposition Social Democratic Party. He added, "We will probably start with mass protests aimed at paralyzing the entire country." Obradovic and other opposition figures met September 28 to plan protest actions, including rallies and civil disobedience that they hope to culminate in a general strike several days later.

The 7,000 coal miners at Kolobara put down their tools the next day and 4,500 miners at the Kostolac mine in eastern Serbia walked off the job two days later. The two mines supply the largest power plants in Yugoslavia, which serve electricity to the water supply system, sewage system, city transportation, and other institutions. The miners say they will stay on strike until Milosevic resigns.

Copper miners in Majdanpek, who also walked off the job, parked dump trucks at the mine entrance, and unloaded dirt and rocks to build barricades. Other workers put up barricades in the central town of Cacak, but police stopped 500 people from reimposing a blockade on a highway near Novi Sad.

The Milosevic regime has already conceded a big defeat in local elections--the opposition will govern in almost 100 towns and cities in Serbia. In the winter of 1996 thousands of protesters marched every day for three months, forcing Belgrade to reverse its anti-democratic annulment of municipal election results that brought victories to an opposition coalition in 15 of Serbia's 19 largest cities.  
 
Washington bankrolls opposition
Washington and the imperialist powers in Europe have thrown their support to Kostunica, declaring him all but the winner. "It is increasingly apparent that the opposition prevailed and any claims to the contrary by Milosevic are false," said White House spokesman Jake Siewert. Washington is pressing Moscow for help in forcing Milosevic's ouster.

The Clinton administration has invested massive funds in its "pro-democracy campaign," to the tune of $77 million over the past three years, while intervening in Yugoslavia's internal affairs. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy are the major financial conduits to the Yugoslav opposition forces.

"People assume we pick candidates. Our efforts don't do that," a U.S. State Department official scoffed. "We just make sure there's an architecture for a fair election." Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Department officials said Washington plans to bolster its military presence in the Balkans, which includes sending a warship, USS George Washington, to the Adriatic Sea.

Last year Washington organized a 78-day bombing campaign against the Yugoslav workers state and deployed a U.S.-led NATO occupation force in the Serbian province of Kosova. Some half a million workers lost their jobs due to the bombing, which destroyed factories, schools, hospitals, bridges, and other parts of the country's infrastructure. The opposition forces blame Milosovic for this state of affairs and pointed to the promised lifting of the sanctions by Washington if the regime is defeated.

Most of Milosevic's opponents have been unable to muster enough support in the past to oust him because of their links to Washington and the other imperialist states belonging to the NATO military alliance. One leading Serbian opposition leader, Zoran Djindjic, president of the Democratic Party in Serbia, was part of a delegation that received a warm reception in the U.S. capital last year.

For his part, Milosovic appealed to Serbian chauvinist sentiments, urging people not to choose the side of the NATO countries that bombed Yugoslavia. "With the money that they have received from abroad," he stated, the opposition "is buying, blackmailing, and scaring citizens."

Kostunica, also a Serbian nationalist, gained standing as an opposition figure when he was dismissed from Belgrade University law school in 1974 for defending a professor who was imprisoned for criticizing the regime of Josef Tito. Kostunica was the only one among several intellectuals who refused a 1989 offer by Milosevic to be rehired. He criticized the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and called the bombing of civilian targets possible war crimes. Kostunica has sought to distance himself from Washington, saying Yugoslavia must not become "anybody's protectorate."

The opposition leader emphasizes in many appearances that he accepts no aid from the U.S. government and has called the imperialist-organized war crimes tribunal "an instrument of American policy and not of international law." Kostunica said he would not deliver Milosevic, indicted last year for alleged war crimes, over to the Hague for trial.