Franic is a Serbian psychiatrist living in Belgrade.

On this U.S. election day, citizens of the Serbian capital of Belgrade have more existential thoughts on their mind than who will win the elections in the U.S.A. Standpoints on U.S. presidential elections are divided in Serbia between complete ignorance (“McCain who?” or “Obama... Bin Laden?”) and careful optimism that if Obama manages to win the race, the turbulence caused around the world by constant American involvement will lessen.

But for the ordinary Serb, it’s not all that important. “I don’t care, it’s their business,” says one 35-year-old lawyer. “All their presidents, apart from JFK, were mostly manipulative creeps so as far as our life in Serbia is concerned. Neither one of today’s candidates would make any difference to us.”

The average Serb really doesn’t care much about internal political issues of U.S.A., apart from their administration’s stand on the issue of Kosovo, which is the only thing that would make any difference to Serbs at all. Not even the financial aid a new U.S. administration might be willing to give can measure up to that.

The 55-year-old bakery owner from the outskirts of Belgrade says: “I’d rather have a Democratic president in the office... but then, when I think that the last guy who was a Democrat viciously bombed us flat nine years ago, I am not even sure about that.”

Most Serbs still hold a grudge against Americans for a senseless three-month-long, day-and-night bombing of Serbia in 1999. And against the president (Clinton) who -- as most here think -- had to turn the public attention off his sex affairs so he decided to bomb Serbia. On the other hand, the distaste for Bush and his politics on Afghanistan, Iraq and Kosovo seems to be even greater, as well as deep distaste of a man’s lack of intellect and capability to put together a simple sentence in a grammatically correct fashion.

Now, in dilemma about whether a Republican or a Democrat, in my opinion the vote in Serbia would go to the black guy: he is different, young, funny, and in (still) racial America, his victory would have a weight of hope that you can succeed against all the odds. For Serbs, that would be something they could symbolically identify with, along with his softer foreign policy and left wing turn that he would seemingly be making on the scene of U.S. everyday life.

Knowing that the legendary basketball hero of Serbian nation, Mr. Vlade Divac, who spent most of his career playing in NBA, publicly supported Obama, I believe it is good enough for that part of Serbs who follow sports (about all the male population of the country) to support Obama as well.

If the world would be a just place, I would say “May the best man win!” but living in Serbia and being a Serb, I know better.

Instead I say: may he who wins have some common sense to do good (and along the way, may he grow a special benevolence to Serbs).