April 15, 1991
WORLD REPORT; WORLDGRAM; NEWSLETTER; Vol. 110, No. 14; p. 50
Communists prevail in the Balkans, for now
By Robin Knight, Emily MacFarquhar, Eric Ransdell and Susan V. Lawrence
London; Hong Kong; Beijing

OPPOSITION MOUNTS. For the fourth time in a year, elections in the Balkans, this time in Albania, have produced a clear Communist majority. Earlier ballots in Bulgaria, Romania and the largest of Yugoslavia's republics, Serbia, yielded similar outcomes. Yet evidence is growing that these triumphs will prove short-lived. Street protests in Bulgaria already have forced the Communists to share power with the opposition and to move decisively toward free-market policies. In Serbia, the demagoguery of Slobodan Milosevic, the republic's president, has backfired as the economy collapses and Serbs feel cheated by his rhetoric. Romania's ruling National Salvation Front, made up of ex-Communists, has done better, but it, too, is splitting under the pressure of enforced price hikes, helping to revive opposition forces. Albania may not be far behind.

The Balkans have never been fertile ground for parliamentary-style government. Even before Communist rule, free elections were rare, authoritarian rule was the norm and violence was always close to the surface. Four decades of communism, a failed economic system and the release of pent-up nationalism still drive the region's dynamics. The elderly, the poorly educated and the rural poor equate communism with the status quo and vote for continuity. In Albania and Romania, two thirds of the population lives in rural poverty, deeply suspicious of urban ''intellectuals" pushing change. Communists find it easy to exploit pervasive fears of land reform and lost jobs, and they are adept at harnessing the region's strongest political force, nationalism, to their own ends. And elections in the Balkans, while free, generally have not been fair. In each case, the opposition had little time to prepare, had few resources and little or no access to television. Albania's progress toward reform will be at least as difficult as that of its Balkan neighbors, maybe more so. Civil war cannot be ruled out. In the towns, anger at the nonexistent pace of change is palpable. Yet uniquely in Europe, communism in Albania, especially in rural areas, is synonymous with the very existence of the state. Most important, nowhere outside the Soviet Union is the communist grip on power tighter. It adds up to a volatile mix, pitting a loosely led, recently formed opposition against party hard-liners who are backed by a still intact security apparatus unalterably opposed to coalition government.

Albania's first multiparty elections since Communists took power in 1944 ended with the ruling Party of Labor in control of at least two thirds of the People's Assembly. President Ramiz Alia failed to win a seat in the capital, Tirana, but vowed to stay in power, following ''Marxist-Leninist" policies. As the opposition Democratic Party labeled the vote ''a fraud," violence broke out.

WHO BLINKS FIRST? A row over plans for a new $ 16 billion airport in Hong Kong reflects an ongoing battle of wills between Britain and China over who really runs Hong Kong. Warning the Chinese that Hong Kong's colonial government would shelve the airport project rather than bow to China's escalating demands for power sharing, British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd has taken an unusually tough line for a government whose normal approach is to cajole and conciliate the Chinese. But British backs are up as they see their colonial administration being turned into a lame duck six years before Hong Kong reverts to Chinese rule in 1997. The massive airport project was intended to be the most important of a series of measures to restore shattered morale in Hong Kong after the Tiananmen Square massacre. But China has diluted every move. Even if the airport goes ahead, a confidence booster has been turned into a confidence buster. The British share some of the blame. They set out to impress Hong Kong investors and international financiers with their commitment to Hong Kong's future. So they inflated the airport's multibillion-dollar price tag by including the cost of connecting roads, bridges, railroads and ports. The result was to confirm China's suspicions that Britain was bent on spending Hong Kong's last dollar before China took over. China's protests then became self-fulfilling as private investors ran for the hills and the Hong Kong government was forced to take on more of the financing burden. In fact, Britain could have made the airport project look almost cost free by putting the profits from selling off the old airport onto the balance sheet. Now Hong Kong is paying the price for this public relations disaster. China is demanding that the airport be scaled back, that China sit on its governing board and that Britain guarantee a minimum of $ 6.5 billion in Hong Kong's reserves by 1997. For Britain, it is a no-win game: Giving in to China and standing firm are equally liable to set off more nervous spasms in shellshocked Hong Kong.

British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd broke China's post-Tiananmen quarantine last week when he became the first senior Western politician to visit Beijing since the June 1989 incident. But the message he took was not conciliatory. It was: Hands off Hong Kong.