site.btaUPDATED Serbians Vote in Snap Elections

Serbians began voting on Sunday in parliamentary elections, which are the fifth in a row since President Aleksandar Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party came to power in 2012.

Voting began on Sunday morning in over 8,200 voting sections and will last until 8 p.m. local time.

Vucic cast his ballot in the voting section in the New Belgrade municipality after waiting in line with other citizens.

“I expect a good turnout. I expect a landslide victory,” he told journalists afterwards.

The snap elections were triggered by weekly protests across Serbia, sparked by two mass shootings in May. The first shooting took place at a school in Belgrade, where a teenager shot dead nine students and a security guard. A day later, a young man opened fire in a village near the Serbian capital, killing eight people. The protesters demanded that the government take responsibility and that further promotion of violence in the media and public space be stopped.

These are the fourth snap legislative elections since the Serbian Progressive Party took office. The most recent ones were held in April 2022.

The opposition accuses Vucic and his party of corruption, media restriction, and violence against political opponents.

After casting his ballot, Dragan Djilas, one of the leaders of the pro-European opposition coalition Serbia Against Violence, said that changes in Serbia had already begun.

“No force can stop them. People are determined to live in a country without insecurity, to live a normal life without crime and corruption, without price increases,” he said in a media statement posted on Facebook.

In addition to the parliamentary vote, local elections are taking place in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina and more than 60 municipalities, including Belgrade.

Some 6.5 million Serbians are eligible to vote. They will elect 250 MPs among 2,800 candidates from 18 lists.

Voter turnout was at 15.1% by 11 a.m. local time, according to polls by the CESID and Ipsos agencies.

The authorities in Pristina barred Kosovo Serbs from voting in Kosovo. Belgrade does not recognize Kosovo’s independence declared in 2008, which has been a source of unremitting tensions between the two countries. The Kosovo Serbs will have to travel to Serbia to exercise their franchise.

Polls show that the coalition formed around Vucic's party will draw the most support, followed by the opposition coalition, Serbia Against Violence, named after the slogan of the protests following the mass shootings. The Socialist Party of Serbia, which is currently part of the government, is third in the polls. Three more coalitions have a chance to cross the 3% electoral threshold.

The elections will be monitored by some 5,590 local and foreign observers, which is a record number, Republican Election Commission Chair Vladimir Dimitrijevic said earlier this week, as quoted by Serbian media.

The foreign observers include representatives of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the EU Delegation to Serbia and the European Parliament.