Milosevic's final days: from arrogance to panic to disgrace

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - The chubby man in the red track suit didn't know it, but he was about to make history.

Something - frustration, rage or just the heat of the moment - drove him through a surprised knot of riot police and onto the steps of the federal parliament. For a moment, he was there alone, standing on the cusp of an uprising.

''Don't do it, there'll be a bloodbath!'' cried an opposition leader over a loudspeaker.

The people in the crowd on Thursday - more than 200,000 angry opponents of Slobodan Milosevic - weren't listening. They were watching the lone man in the track suit. He was waving them on.

A few people stepped forward. Then more. Then a stampede that overwhelmed the line of police.

With their votes, they had expressed their demand for change. Now, on a brisk afternoon, they were literally trampling Milosevic's 13 years of rule - a period of war, corruption and despair that saw Yugoslavia ripped apart and reduced to a pariah, beggar nation.

Soon the wide, granite steps of the parliament were clogged with protesters. They were at the front doors of the stately building, surrounding the bronze horse statues that watch over the main entrance.

From inside, police launched another barrage of tear gas and stun grenades. But this time, there was no stopping the mob. They choked. Their eyes stung. But still they came. Even the weather helped them: A strong wind helped carry away the tear gas.

Within minutes, the parliament - a symbol of Milosevic's autocratic rule - was set on fire and looted. The autocratic leader's dreaded policemen were in disarray. They fled or tossed away shields and batons to surrender to the demonstrators.

''He's finished!'' read a wrinkled opposition banner left dangling on the assembly's doors.

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Milosevic had called Yugoslav presidential and parliamentary elections for Sept. 24, feeling it was his best bet to refresh his power before another harsh winter with no heating and a lack of staple goods. He also was counting on riding anti-Western sentiments stirred up by last year's 78-day NATO bombing.

Milosevic and his neo-communist cronies were brimming with confidence.

''We'll beat them 100-0,'' predicted Ivan Markovic, one of Milosevic's closest allies.

But by early September, Milosevic was trailing badly in the polls behind a stiff, unpolished law professor named Vojislav Kostunica. Milosevic dismissed the results as ''enemy'' propaganda financed by the West.

But when his Socialist did their own poll, revealing an even worse shortfall for Milosevic, he threw a pollster out of his presidential office in the heavily protected Dedinje district.

''You are lying,'' he shouted, according to sources close to the former president. He ordered criminal charges to be filed against the opposition polling companies, saying they were misinforming the public.

Milosevic was privately in panic by late September. He turned for help to his Marxist wife, Mirjana Markovic, using her for what she does best: launch merciless verbal attacks against perceived foes of Yugoslavia.

Milosevic, too, hit the road. At one rally in Montenegro, Serbia's smaller partner in the two-republic Yugoslav federation, Milosevic lashed out at his opponents, calling them ''rats and hyenas.''

Serbian TV and the Politika daily newspaper - his chief pillars of propaganda - inflated the number of those who took part in poorly attended rallies. The Vecernje Novosti daily carried a front-page photo from the Montenegro rally, merging several pictures to make the crowd look huge. The trick was so obvious it was mocked in public.

Milosevic's wife called the elections ''a matter of life and death.'' But according to party sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, she also tried to dispel fears among party officials, saying: ''The winner will be the one who counts the vote and not the one who wins.''

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On election night, Milosevic spokesman Nikola Sainovic was the messenger bearing bad news.

He rushed to the president's White Palace in Dedinje to tell him that Kostunica appeared to be surging toward an outright victory. Milosevic reacted with fury, grabbing Sainovic by his mustache and telling him to go and reverse the results, Socialist party sources said.

The Milosevic-controlled election commission is accused of shaving off just enough votes from Kostunica to justify calling a run-off. Kostunica refused the second round, saying new balloting would give the beleaguered Milosevic enough time to regroup, cheat even more and try to steal victory.

With Milosevic unlikely to concede the clear defeat and step down, opposition leaders forged a plan that included widespread civil disobedience and possible use of force. Massive strikes and road blockades, unseen in Yugoslavia's 55-year history, spread throughout the country.

On Oct. 2, in a last-ditch attempt to stem the tide, Milosevic used a televised address to plead with Serbs to rally behind him, saying the country would break apart and become a Western colony if he were not in charge.

He later summoned his secret service chief, Rade Markovic, and another close ally, army chief of staff Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, for a crisis meeting. Milosevic urged them to prepare a crackdown against his opponents, a source at the meeting said. But they told him there was a simmering mutiny within the police and army and that officers were likely to switch sides in case of an intervention, sources said.

''Milosevic looked like he was going to die,'' one source said. ''And Mira (Markovic) went into hysterics. Doctors had to give her a tranquilizer injection.''

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In Cacak, an opposition stronghold in the industrial belt south of Belgrade, Mayor Velimir Ilic gathered a group of radicals including known local gangsters, karate experts and a few former policemen. They forged a plan to be put into effect in case Milosevic refused to step down by their deadline: 3 p.m. on Oct. 5.

That morning, with Milosevic still clinging to power, they packed up a front-end loader and drove to Belgrade. During the 60-mile drive to the capital, the Cacak crowd swelled to more than 10,000. Nothing stood in their way. They people pushed aside four police roadblocks - including one with trucks loaded with sand - and marched to the front of the parliament building.

''Everything was planned,'' Ilic said. ''We said we won't return to Cacak until Milosevic was gone. And why hide it? Many of our men were armed and they knew exactly what they were doing.''

Ilic said the takeover plan included the onslaughts that eventually materialized at the parliament, the state broadcasting headquarters and the Politika newspaper.

At the TV headquarters, a front-end loader plowed down the doors and the crowd streamed in. Several well-known reporters were severely beaten by the vengeful crowd as payback for years of feeding the public the warped Milosevic version of reality. At parliament, members of the crowd who surged past the police cordon took over the building. Fires broke out inside as protesters trashed offices, hurling pictures of Milosevic supporters out the windows.

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Having been virtually deserted by top allies and fearing reprisals, Milosevic and his wife fled their usual residence and went into hiding in another house in Dedinje.

On Friday, a day after the downtown rampage, Milosevic finally conceded the electoral defeat. The once-formidable Yugoslav president looked like a shadow of his former self.

''I intend to rest a bit and spend some more time with my family and especially with my grandson, Marko, and after that to help my party gain force and contribute to future prosperity,'' he said in a televised address.

Many weren't ready to let it go at that.

''Milosevic and his wife should hang,'' exclaimed student Miroslav Jankovic during the carnival-like celebration, which stretched well into Friday before jubilation turned to happy exhaustion. ''Only then we'll be certain they won't torment us again.''

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EDITORS NOTE: Dusan Stojanovic has covered all four Balkan wars triggered by Milosevic and uprisings in neighboring Romania and Bulgaria.