BOTH Serbs and Croats seem angry. On Saturday Serbs, egged on by the opposition leader, Tomislav Nikolić, marched in Belgrade to demand new elections. Meanwhile Croats took to the streets in Zagreb to protest against the conviction of two generals by the UN war-crimes tribunal in The Hague. The causes may look different—but beneath the surface the underlying grievances are similar.

In Croatia the public mood has been ugly for months. But the long sentences meted out to General Ante Gotovina and General Mladen Markač caused a huge shock. In August 1995 both men played a big part pushing secessionist Serbs out of their Krajina homeland. Few Croats deny that crimes were committed. But the tribunal found that the generals were part of a criminal enterprise whose leaders included Croatia's then president, Franjo Tudjman.

Many Croats feel that what they saw as the heroic liberation of Croatian land has been tarnished. The government, led by Jadranka Kosor, is flailing. It seems to have assumed that the generals would get short sentences, or even be acquitted. Now it says it will do all it can to reverse the convictions on appeal.

Mrs Kosor still insists that her aim is to finish talks on joining the European Union this summer. But polls find many Croats feeling little but antipathy towards the EU. That may change before a referendum. But the war-crimes tribunal has further undermined support, since co-operating with it by catching General Gotovina was a key Brussels demand. Ines Sabalić, a Croatian journalist, says that Croats feel that the EU is constantly judging their country as not good enough. Some may retort: not good enough for what?

In March Bojan Milković, head of Croatia's oil company, was arrested on corruption charges. He was only the latest victim of an anti-corruption drive whose biggest scalp is Ivo Sanader, a former prime minister who was arrested in December in Austria. Mr Sanader came from the Dalmatian port of Split; Mr Gotovina was head of Split's military district in 1995. Today Split is seeing protests against plans to develop the forested Marjan park area near to the city, in which both the town's rich mayor and his girlfriend have financial interests.

People across the former Yugoslavia are angry about rising regional disparities. Thirty years ago, says Petar Filipic, a Croatian economist, GDP per head in Zagreb was only 10% bigger than in Split. Now the gap has widened to over 100%. Manufacturing industry, which included shipbuilding, once made up a third of the local economy. Today it is a fifth and falling. That industry is becoming just a memory in Split would not matter if new jobs were being created to take its place, but they are not.

In Serbia, most voters dislike Mr Nikolić, whose party split from an extreme nationalist one in which he was deputy to a leader who once promised to gouge out Croatian eyes with a rusty spoon. But today, angry with a government they see as helping a few to get rich but doing nothing for ordinary folk, more Serbs are ready to forget the past and back Mr Nikolić. Populism is on the rise right across the Balkans for similar reasons.