Right-wing ruling party wins parliamentary election in Serbia
According to projections, the SNS has 127 of the 250 seats in parliament. "We will have an absolute majority in parliament," said Vucic on Sunday evening in the capital Belgrade. Previously, the SNS had 120 seats and was dependent on a coalition partner.
Vucic's SNS had gone into the election as the favorite despite high inflation and months of mass protests in Serbia. The president was omnipresent in the election campaign and Sunday's vote was seen as a referendum on his government.
The biggest competition for Vucic's party was Alliance Serbia against Violence. The movement emerged from the mass protests following two gun attacks in the spring that left 19 people dead. The demonstrators accused the government of promoting a culture of violence, also with the help of the media it controls. The protests were increasingly directed against government policy as a whole.
The elections in the Balkan state were overshadowed by allegations of fraud. Opposition leader Radomir Lazovic complained of "numerous irregularities" during the election. He spoke of "vote buying" and forged signatures and possibly the "dirtiest election process" to date.
An international observer mission consisting of representatives from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the EU Parliament and the Council of Europe reported a number of "irregularities" during the ballot on Monday, including cases of violence, vote buying and the stuffing of ballot boxes with forged ballot papers.
The Federal Foreign Office in Berlin referred in the evening to the violations cited by the OSCE. This was "unacceptable for a country with EU candidate status", the ministry stated in the short message service X (formerly Twitter).
According to the opposition, tens of thousands of residents of the Bosnian Serb republic of Republika Srpska were also brought in on buses to cast their votes illegally in Belgrade.
On Monday evening, thousands of people took part in a demonstration in Belgrade. "Vucic, you thief" and "Vucic, get lost" were shouted by the demonstrators, who also marched in front of the headquarters of the electoral commission.
Vucic had called the new parliamentary elections himself. Since he first took office in 2014 - when he was still Prime Minister - government cabinets in Serbia rarely last until the end of a legislative term. Critics see this as a maneuver to obstruct the opposition.
The Kremlin congratulated Vucic and the SNS. Moscow hopes that the "path of strengthening friendship and our cooperation" will continue, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Hungary's right-wing populist head of government Viktor Orban spoke of an "overwhelming election victory".
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Source: www.stern.de
