It would be easy to dismiss the results of last week's poll in Serbia as "a protest vote." The strong showing of hardline nationalists certainly reflects the country's economic difficulties and the humiliations that have followed the war-crimes trials of former leaders. The problem is the nationalists won too many votes to be fobbed off as a mere protest. Rather, Serbia's moderates have failed their country. They offer no coherent alternative to the extremism of the nationalists. Their continuing failure to find common cause will ensure that radicals retake control of the government. It may only be a matter of time.

Serbia, the major part of what is left of Yugoslavia, was forced to call an election when the coalition government of Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic collapsed in October. Mr. Zivkovic inherited the premiership after the assassination of Zoran Djindjic last March. Djindjic took office three years ago, three months after public protests forced Mr. Slobodan Milosevic, the Serb nationalist leader who presided over the destruction of Yugoslavia, to resign. Djindjic handed Mr. Milosevic over to the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague in June 2001, where he is currently standing trial.

The decision to hand over Mr. Milosevic and other Serb leaders won the government in Belgrade friends and support in the West, but it was bitterly divisive at home. Mr. Milosevic is still a hero to many Serbs. He headed the list of Serbian Socialist Party candidates; three other war crimes suspects were also on the ballot. Mr. Vojislav Seselj, a former ally of Mr. Milosevic until the two men fell out, heads the Serbian Radical Party and is also awaiting trial in The Hague. The Radicals are associated with ethnic cleansing during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia; Mr. Seselj famously said that the eyes of Serbia's enemies should be gauged out with rusty spoons.