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Milosevic, says a European diplomat who knows him well, "is a brigand and a fanatic, but a sly, intelligent and sophisticated one." His ruthlessness has always been paired with competence and superficial charm. "He will convince you that he is a most reasonable and sympathetic individual," says a U.S. analyst, and his political instincts are remarkably shrewd. His arrival as head of the Belgrade party in 1984 ended a rudderless period of creeping liberalization, when the communists needed to solidify their grip on power after the death of Tito."What I liked most about him was that his desk was always empty -- he knew how to work," says Jurij Bajec, an economist now fiercely critical of Milosevic who once worked under him at Belgrade's largest bank and later followed him into politics. Although Milosevic talked about economic reform, he slapped bans on writers and gradually purged dissenting voices from TV Belgrade and the influential Belgrade daily Politika. "The party leaders had been in a panic over signs of liberalization," says Djukic. "Milosevic understood this, knew which card to play and succeeded in getting them behind him."
The same unerring sense of where power lay served him again in late 1986, when a major fracas erupted over a secret memo drafted by members of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences. These intellectuals articulated long- festering resentments over Tito's systematic undermining of Serbia's power, culminating in the 1974 constitution that gave far-reaching autonomy to Albanian-dominated Kosovo and to Vojvodina, which has a significant Hungarian minority. While other party leaders publicly condemned the nationalist tract, Milosevic remained silent, indicating that he shared its views.
Less than a year later, he grabbed the opportunity to put his populism to work. He was dispatched to Kosovo, the southern province Serbs view as the cradle of their nationhood, where their complaints about mistreatment by the ethnic Albanian majority were on the boil. As angry Serbs tussled with police to enter a small meeting hall in Kosovo Polje, Milosevic emerged on a balcony to address the crowd with words that resounded throughout Yugoslavia: "No one has the right to beat the people!" In a show of personal courage, he strode out into the crowds to repeat the message, and the Serbs were galvanized.
"From that day, the balance changed," says Bajec, who was then a member of the Serbian party's leadership. . "He knew how to touch the Serbs' national feelings. That became his main winning card, and he knew it would make millions come to hear him speak." He was a formidable presence at rallies throughout Serbia. "In less than a year," says Djukic, "he moved from being a second-rate politician to almost a god." And in the process, he purged the party of all opposition, turned television into an instrument of personal power and abolished the autonomy of Kosovo and Vojvodina.