Outside a sportswear shop on the outskirts of Novi Sad, Serbia’s second city, there’s a hoarding of a body builder. Owing to the speed of my taxi I can’t be sure this is a promotion for a fashion label: there’s still a chance the bloke in the picture is in fact an election candidate.
Many citizens, including my taxi driver, don’t seem interested in talking politics, but as a visitor to the country the election is hard to escape. City centres, motorways and even, rather illogically, the airport are plastered in party billboards. And despite a wide variety of options, most bear similar images, often of men looking macho in front of national symbols or scenery. Continue reading
The arrest of former Serbian military chief, Ratko Mladic, finally begins to draw a line underneath the unspeakable savagery that characterised the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. Mladic was the remaining ‘big fish’ still unaccounted for, and his capture poses almost as many embarrassing questions for the Serb authorities as for the Pakistani authorities with the discovery that Osma bin Landen was living next door to one of the most significant military bases in the country. 