Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic attends a rally of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) ahead of the parliamentary elections at Stark Arena in Belgrade, Serbia, December 2, 2023. Portal/Marko Djurica/File Photo acquire license rights
- Survey sees President Vucic's SNS party as the frontrunner
- He is running a popular election campaign after mass shootings shake up power
- The opposition accuses the SNS of putting pressure on voters and bribing them
BELGRADE, Dec 13 (Portal) – Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has reached out to ordinary Serbs on a popular tour of the country to secure another term for his populist party in a snap election on Sunday, largely due to public outrage mass shootings.
Street protests shook the more than decade-long reign of Vucic and his Serbian Progressive Party in power in the Western Balkan republic after two shootings in May that left 18 people dead, including nine elementary school students and teenagers.
For weeks, huge crowds backed by the centrist and liberal opposition marched through Belgrade, demanding government action to counter a culture of violence they said authorities allowed to flourish in society and calling for early elections before the end of the year.
Opposition parties and human rights activists also accuse Vucic and the SNS of restricting media freedom, supporting violence against opponents, corruption and links to organized crime. Vucic and his allies deny such allegations.
The December 17 parliamentary election – the fifth since 2012, involving simultaneous voting in most municipalities, including the capital Belgrade and the northern province of Vojvodina – comes just 18 months after the previous one.
During the election campaign, Vucic, whose term as president ends in 2027, drove his own Skoda car instead of a fancy government sedan to northern Serbia to check the quality of various road construction works.
In other trips around the country, he helped farmers cook pork cutlets, flipped pancakes, opened a Tiktok account, gave a weekly interview with a major opposition party and visited a monastery – all in an effort to boost his party's popularity after the backlash to the … to strengthen shootings.
“The state is not a joke, and it cannot be ruled by irresponsible people,” Vucic, 53 – originally a far-right nationalist who later turned to a pro-European, conservative stance – said in a video posted to his Instagram account. refers to political enemies.
In the months before the election, the outgoing government made one-off payments to students, pensioners and single mothers and announced increases in wages and pensions in parts of the public sector.
SNS is way ahead in the pre-election polls
Radomir Lazovic, a leader of the opposition Alliance Serbia Against Violence, accused the SNS of pressuring and bribing voters.
“There is a big chance that things will change. People realized that the SNS was unwilling to change anything even after such a tragic (shooting) event,” Lazovic told Portal.
A recent pre-election poll by the Nova Srpska Politicka Misao website puts the SNS in the lead with 39.8% of the vote, followed by Lazovic's coalition with 25.6% and the Socialist Party of outgoing Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic, a coalition partner of SNS 8 .9%.
After the two mass shootings and in line with previous commitments, Vucic resigned as leader of the SNS, handing the post to Milos Vucevic, his closest ally and outgoing defense minister, but he retains crucial control over party policy.
“Major political changes at the republic level are not realistic and a significant change of government would be a surprise,” said Bojan Klacar, managing director of the polling institute CESID.
But he said the SNS could lose power in local elections in Belgrade – a major blow since the capital of 1.4 million people represents about a quarter of the electorate and the mayor is considered one of Serbia's most influential officials.
Serbia is seeking to join the European Union, but a key prerequisite for that is normalizing relations with Kosovo, its former predominantly Albanian province that declared independence in 2008 after a guerrilla uprising in the late 1990s. EU-brokered talks to this end have stalled and tensions remain high.
Belgrade must also crack down on corruption and organized crime, liberalize the economy and align its foreign policy with that of the EU, including sanctions against Russia – a traditional ally of Belgrade – over its invasion of Ukraine.
Dragan Stankovic, 67, a Belgrade pensioner, said he would vote for the SNS because the status quo was safer. “(I assume) that it will continue like this. Nothing else. It is enough to remain (as we are).”
But Milos Lazovic, 24, a student who took part in the recent opposition rally in Belgrade, said a vote to remove the SNS was “a better option… Maybe they (the opposition) will offer new perspectives and give some to young people without party affiliation.” “new opportunities and jobs”.
Reporting by Ivana Secularac and Aleksandar Vasovic;
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