After the clear victory of President Aleksandar Vučić and his Serbian Progress Party (SNS) in Sunday’s presidential and parliamentary elections, the opposition has not yet given up hope of at least managing to win local government in Belgrade.
After counting a good 88 percent of the votes, Belgrade’s municipal electoral commission declared the SNS the clear winner with 48 of the 110 seats in the city’s parliament. Along with the alliance’s former partner, Ivica Dačić’s Socialists, Vučić’s party has a narrow majority in the city’s parliament with 56 seats.
Irregularities in 99 polling stations
However, the opposition claims that the electoral commission has not yet counted the votes of 125 polling stations. Irregularities had also already been identified in 99 polling stations, which would also require repeating the vote in several polling stations. Initially, it was not entirely clear how many votes it should be.
After a meeting of opposition representatives on Tuesday night, it is clear that the opposition is pinning its hopes on the tiny Social Democratic Party of former president Boris Tadić, which narrowly missed reaching the city parliament on Sunday with 2, 8 percent of the vote. It must be the “Go, Go, Folks!” (“Ajmo ljudi!”) managed to enter the Belgrade parliament, which would guarantee the opposition a narrow majority and the seizure of power.
According to the opposition, around 916,000 eligible voters participated in the elections for the municipal administration of Belgrade and 485,000 voted for the opposition. The projections and hopes of the opposition have not yet been commented on by the SNS.