Good chances for a next term.
(Photo: IMAGO/Xinhua)
Belgrade Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has declared himself the winner of the presidential and parliamentary elections. Vucic said on Monday night that he was proud to have won a second term without having to go to the runoff. According to forecasts, Vucic could account for almost 60 percent of the votes in the presidential election, according to the election research groups Ipsos and Cesid. If this is confirmed, the head of state could start a second term of five years, a run-off election would not be necessary.
According to calculations by both institutes, Vucic received 59.8 percent of the votes on Sunday and his strongest opponent, Zdravko Ponos, 17 percent. Vucic could therefore start his second term in a row.
In parliament, Vucic’s SNS party is in first place with 43.6 percent, followed by the Ujedinjeni party with 12.8 percent, Ipsos and Cesid said. The national electoral commission announced that the first projections based on counting results and data on voter turnout would not be published until Monday evening.
Presidential and early parliamentary elections were held in Serbia on Sunday. According to the Serbian civil rights organization CRTA, turnout was 55.1 percent one hour before the polls closed. Several opposition politicians reported voting irregularities. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) wants to comment on this on Monday.
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The nationalist Vucic has been in charge of politics in Serbia since 2012. The parliament, dominated by his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), was only elected in 2020. Vucic had the new election brought forward in order to secure the supremacy of the SNS by merging it with the presidential election. He would like to lead his country into the EU, but has so far also tried to maintain good relations with Russia – most recently despite the Russian attack on Ukraine.
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For the first time, ethnic Serbs from Kosovo were not allowed to take part in the Serbian elections at their place of residence, but had to travel to Serbia to vote. The reason for this was that there was no agreement between Belgrade and Pristina on a voting procedure on Kosovan territory. Numerous buses and private cars with Kosovo Serbs drove to Serbia on Sunday for the vote without incident.
So far, the ethnic Kosovo Serbs have been allowed to vote in Serbian elections in their home country – thanks to mediation by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). This time there was no such procedure. Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti had demanded that the government in Belgrade contact the government in Pristina directly on this matter. However, the Serbian government rejected this because it sees such a step as an indirect recognition of Kosovo as a state.
Kosovo, which is predominantly inhabited by Albanians, broke away from Serbia in 1999 after a NATO intervention and declared its independence in 2008. To date, Serbia has not recognized this and continues to lay claim to the territory of the state recognized by Germany and most other EU countries.
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