Faced with strong protests against his government, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced early parliamentary elections on December 17.
“Serbia is at a turning point, citizens should say what kind of policies they want,” Vucic said last night on the private pro-government television channel Prva. He will call early elections by November 2, as required by the constitution.
Portal/Zorana Jevtic
Two school shootings in May that left 18 people dead, including a massacre at a Belgrade school by a 13-year-old, sparked weekly anti-government demonstrations. Participants in the protests accuse the media outlets controlled by Vucic of fomenting a climate of hatred and glorifying violence in the country.
The Serbs elected the current parliament in April of the previous year. The nationalist presidential party SNS, together with allies, has a comfortable majority.
Early elections are common in Serbia. Vucic governs with authoritarian methods. Social communication, judicial power and administration are largely in the hands of the president’s followers, who is also the president of the SNS.
Conflict with Kosovo
The Vucic government has also placed itself in a difficult situation in the conflict with Kosovo, a former Serbian province now inhabited almost exclusively by Albanians. On September 24, a group of commandos that had invaded from Serbia attacked a town in northern Kosovo. Three Serbian paramilitaries and an Albanian police officer were killed in fighting.
EU-mediated talks between Serbia and Kosovo, which have so far failed to make any progress, are likely to become even more precarious. Experts call on the EU and the US, which have so far shown a lot of understanding towards Vucic, to impose punitive measures against Belgrade over the aggression in northern Kosovo.