Vojislav Kostunica cuts an unlikely figure as hero and prospective saviour of Yugoslavia. While despairing Serbs and Western leaders looked the other way in search of a Balkan braveheart to rise up and cut the chains that have kept Slobodan Milosevic in power for the past decade, the quietly spoken rival for the presidency slipped under the ropes and, possibly, felled him at the ballot box. Voting in Yugoslavia’s presidential election could well run to a second round on October 8, but Milosevic looks mortally wounded after Sunday’s vote. Even if he manages to hang on to power a little longer, his authority seems fatally undermined by Kostunica’s strong showing.

Soon after the end of the Nato bombing campaign last year, many war and sanctions-weary Serbs looked high and low for someone to lead them against the regime. The political options were bleak: the maverick fence-sitter Vuk Draskovic and his Serbian Renewal Movement on one hand, and the Democratic Party leader Zoran Djindjic on the other. Djindjic’s error was to leave Belgrade at the height of the bombing — seen as an act of cowardice by ordinary Serbs who had no choice but to stay put.

To make matters worse, Djindjic and Draskovic proved repeatedly that they could not put personal differences aside and present a united opposition.

A series of opposition rallies around Serbia in the weeks that followed the Alliance campaign were little more than Sunday outings for the curious and a chance for the two opposition groups to squabble. The only exceptions came when protests were organised by two independent rebels: Ivan Novkovic, a renegade television weatherman in the southern town of Leskovac, and Bogoljub “Marki” Arsenijevic, an artist from the central town of Valjevo. However, while these two would-be revolutionaries galvanised people in their home towns, they were never serious contenders for the post of President.

During this time, Kostunica waited quietly for his moment in history. It came when Milosevic decided to call early elections and Kostunica was chosen to head a multi-party democratic opposition. Whereas the West had been less than accurate in reading the Balkan mentality, Kostunica had read the runes well. He knew that many Serbs had become wary of firebrand politics and paramilitary adventurism. His message has been an almost Gandhi-esque appeal to peaceful resistance.

So who is the man who seems within inches of achieving what would have looked impossible even three months ago — levering Milosevic from power? And will he meet the West’s expectations? Vojislav Kostunica, a married man with no children, was nominated as the candidate of 18 parties and one trade union which form the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS). Born in Belgrade in 1944 to an old Belgrade family, he graduated from the Belgrade School of Law in 1966 and went on to obtain a master’s degree in 1970 and doctorate in 1974.

In 1970 he was appointed assistant lecturer at the Belgrade School of Law, but expelled in 1974, during a political purge of Belgrade University, because of his opposition to communism.

From 1974 until 1981, he worked at the Institute of Social Sciences. He moved on to become director of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory. Until recently, his main claim to fame was as a bookish academic and author of papers on constitutional law, political theory and political philosophy. Kostunica has also worked as editor-in-chief of several specialised journals dedicated to law and philosophy, such as the Archive for Legal and Social Sciences, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy and Society and Theoria.

During the Eighties, while Milosevic was climbing the greasy pole to supreme power, Kostunica turned his legal skills to human rights and was especially active in the Board for the Freedom of Thought and Speech, where he was highly regarded. It was around this time that he became involved in politics, becoming a founder of the Democratic Party in 1989. He has been president of the separate Democratic Party of Serbia since it was founded in 1992 and was a member of the Serbian Parliament from

1990 until 1997 — when his party boycotted the elections due to the “lack of regular electoral conditions”.

Western leaders, however, have been nonplussed. Although senior European Union, American and even Russian politicians have been swift to call on Milosevic to give way immediately and hand power to Kostunica, the lawyer has not always been flavour of the month, especially in Washington.

Kostunica has consistently proclaimed that he would not hand Milosevic over to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, and he was a vigorous critic of the Nato bombardment. This has been seized on by some as proof that he is no different from other war-zealous Balkan leaders. Kostunica has been described in some US state department background briefings as an old-fashioned Serb nationalist, a sort of “Seselj in coat-tails” — a reference to Milosevic’s erstwhile ally, Vojislav Seselj, the ultra-nationalist leader of the Serbian Radical Party.

This is where East and West divide. Opponents of the Milosevic regime see nothing wrong in criticising the Alliance campaign — for the bombing affected nearly everyone. While they may be anti-Milosevic, they believe their political destiny should be decided from within.