The Serbian Parliament has 250 seats, and outgoing President Aleksandar Vučić will face his main opposition rivals, from a right-wing bloc, as well as Belgrade Mayor Dragan Djilas.
Serbia goes to the polls on Sunday, December 17 for early parliamentary elections to elect future members of the People’s Assembly of Serbia and the provincial parliament of the autonomous province of Vojvodina.
Residents of more than 60 cities will also vote, because the mayors of these municipalities resigned when the legislative elections were called.
Who are the main candidates?
Outgoing MPs
On the one hand, we find the ruling coalition led by the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) of the Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić. In the outgoing parliament, this coalition, together with the Hungarian Minority Party, had a comfortable majority of more than 150 deputies. The Serbian Parliament has 250 seats.
This coalition has ruled the country since 2012, when Aleksandar Vučić, after splitting from the Nationalist Radical Party, led the then-new Progressive Party to victory. The second largest coalition partner is the Socialist Party of Serbia, formerly led by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who died in the UN prison in The Hague, accused of war crimes during the wars of the 1990s in former Yugoslavia.
Over the previous decade, Aleksandar Vučić’s party enjoyed significant success in the country’s economic development, having built modern infrastructure, reduced unemployment and attracted foreign investment. But Aleksandar Vučić’s style of governance, which concentrates all the country’s powers in his office, has often led to him being described as a populist autocrat.
Both the European Parliament and the European Commission have addressed the serious shortcomings of Serbian democracy in their annual reports on Serbia’s progress on the path to EU membership. Most complaints concern the rule of law and press freedom.
Aleksandar Vučić is often compared to the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbàn, with whom he maintains a very friendly relationship. Recently, Aleksandar Vučić received widespread criticism from European capitals and the United States for refusing to join Western sanctions against Russia and for openly declaring his intention to maintain good relations with Moscow, while condemning his attack on Ukraine.
The opposition
The opposition is divided into two camps. The first is the so-called pro-European opposition. The largest party is the Freedom and Justice Party, led by former Belgrade mayor Dragan Djilas. This bloc brings together green and center-left parties whose programs are focused on Serbia’s accession to the EU.
Their decade-long attempts to antagonize Aleksandar Vučić have produced mixed results. Some analysts point out that this is due to the lack of a coherent program or counter-offer to voters. They themselves attribute their poor results to the fact that Aleksandar Vučić controls the national media, denigrates them with his tabloid press and obstructs their work. In the outgoing parliament, this bloc had around forty deputies.
The second opposition bloc is that of the right-wing nationalists. They failed to agree on the pre-election coalition and will therefore face voters in two camps.
Both, however, have similar programs. Besides the traditionalist, pro-family, pro-life, anti-abortion and anti-gay discourse typical of the hard right, much of their agenda focuses on Kosovo (a former Serbian province that declared independence in 2008, a decision that Serbia refuses to accept). They argue that safeguarding sovereignty over the “heart of Serbia” is the first of many reasons why Serbs should refuse EU membership. Until now, the parties in this part of the political spectrum had around twenty deputies in Parliament.
Why are the elections early?
Indeed, why should a country with a stable majority in parliament and not experiencing a government crisis organize early elections? And not just once, but four times in a row. The previous elections took place last year.
Since the SNS came to power, this is the seventh time that Serbian citizens have been called to the polls. Only once were deputies given the opportunity to complete their four-year term.
“Aleksandar Vučić calls new elections when it suits him, when he perceives a drop in popularity or when he assumes that situations unfavorable to his government could arise in the future. In doing so, he manages to carve out room for maneuver which allows him to postpone important decisions, mainly those concerning Kosovo.“, writes Antonela Riha, a well-known Serbian journalist and political analyst for the “Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa”.
In the past, the opposition has protested against such elections or even boycotted them. This time, she requested them, but only for the parliaments of Serbia and Belgrade.
“I haven’t solved either side of this equation. I don’t understand why the opposition demanded these elections. It’s a mystery to me. An even bigger mystery is why Aleksandar Vučić intended to organize them anyway. There is no crisis of legitimacy of the government that demands quick elections. There are not hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. When people took to the streets, the opposition leaders who addressed them shouted at Aleksandar Vučić: “don’t you dare call the elections!”says Ljilja Smajlovic, journalist and political analyst.
What are the issues ? Parliamentary elections become presidential
The opposition demanded that parliamentary elections be held separately from those in Belgrade and Vojvodina and that Aleksandar Vučić not lend his name to campaigns for which he is not a candidate. Aleksandar Vučić categorically refused, declaring that the elections were a vote of confidence in his person.
“If they (the opposition) win the elections, I will give them the mandate but I will no longer be the president because I could no longer do anything for the citizens of Serbia. I want people to know that when they vote, They do not only vote for the list of deputies, they also vote for their president, they vote for me or against me, as they (the opposition) say.”said Aleksandar Vučić, during the campaign launch rally.
Is it all about Belgrade?
Opinion polls suggest that the ruling parties’ ratings are not down sharply compared to previous elections. If the SNS can maintain the same or similar coalition, it should have no problem forming the next government.
But the capital is the traditional stronghold of the Civic Alliance of Serbia and the liberals, currently in opposition. In previous elections in Belgrade, the SNS struggled to form the city government and only succeeded after several ballots and the defection of some opposition MPs. This is once again the closest and most important race. Belgrade is home to a quarter of Serbia’s population and produces more than half of the country’s GDP. That’s where the money is, and victory in Belgrade is widely seen as the prelude to seizing power in the whole of Serbia.
The pro-EU opposition is the strongest, but the nationalist opposition and socialists could still be the kingmakers.
What are we proposing to voters?
Throughout the campaign, the ruling SNS party sought to capitalize on economic achievements. Hundreds of kilometers of new and modern highways, high-speed trains, renovated schools and hospitals and a constant influx of foreign investment.
“As of the beginning of October, we recorded 3.42 billion euros in new foreign direct investment this year. Last year was a record, with 4.4 billion, but I hope we will surpass this figure by the end of the year”said Aleksandar Vučić during a rally inaugurating a new road in the province of Vojvodina, in northern Serbia.
The unemployment rate of 9.1% (according to IMF projections) is lower than that of some EU member states and economic growth has remained stable throughout the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine ( this year, the government plans a rate of 2.5%). The government also boasts record reserves of hard currency and gold, as well as a small budget deficit of 3%. The only data that spoils the picture, particularly because it makes life difficult for the population, is inflation, which is the second highest in Europe (Turkey excluded). It stood at more than 10% in November.
The opposition focuses on the rule of law, media freedom and corruption, with these three points constantly criticized in several successive reports on Serbia’s progress towards EU membership, published by the European Commission and the European Parliament.
“The new technical government should put aside their differences, arrest all criminals, you see crime is rampant. The police officers who fight and arrest drug dealers will lead the police, not those who prevent them. Everyone’s property will be examined, as will commercial transactions and calls for tenders. And we will free the media”promised Dragan Djilas on Euronews Serbia.
How did the campaign go?
With the elections transformed into a vote of no confidence or confidence in the power of Aleksandar Vučić, the 45-day long campaign quickly turned into an exchange of insults and accusations. The opposition used its media to accuse Aleksandar Vučić of organizing crime and corruption, and he responded with salvos from the media he controls, including the mass-circulation tabloids, to portray the leaders of the opposition as enemies of the people.
After a visit to Serbia, Council of Europe observers highlighted that the electoral campaign was characterized by “an unprecedented level of negative and alarmist language, attacks on the opposition and journalists and serious problems affecting the media”.
However, physical fights between party activists and poster wars that occurred in the past have not been reported until now.
With polls showing that most older voters are already made up and unlikely to change their minds, politicians are prioritizing younger voters, including those voting for the first time.
Aleksandar Vučić announced that high school students would receive financial aid of 10,000 dinars (90 euros) each and that the newly created allowance cards for students would be supplemented with 1,000 dinars (9 euros). The opposition accused him of bribing voters with money from the country’s budget. Aleksandar Vučić, as well as some of his ministers, have also opened TikTok accounts to further target youth.
As the opposition cries injustice due to the electoral conditions, monitoring of the elections will be crucial to eliminate the possibility of irregularities or complaints about it.
All participating parties are allowed to send observers to all polling stations. As usual, OSCE, Council of Europe and EU missions will observe the vote, as will some Serbian NGOs.