IS THE “WIND OF GHANGE” BLOWING IN SERBIA?
Thewesternbalkans
The snap parliamentarian elections and partial local elections were officially announced on 30th of October 2023 by the president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic and the Serbian parliament was dissolved on the first of November, only a year after forming the current Serbian government on 26 of October 2022, after the presidential and parliamentarian elections held on 3th of April 2022. It is important to stress that the 2022 elections were marked with a lot of election irregularities and the opposition was asking for new elections ever since.
In our opinion he decision was taken by Aleksandar Vucic in result of the fowling reasons:
- 2022 was a difficult year for the ruling coalition after the school shooting in May and the mass protests of the opposition that followed, which brought a significant decrease in the popularity of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party /SNS/ and personally of A. Vucic;
- The incident on 24th of September in the village of Banjska, North Kosovo changed the perception for A. Vucic who was considered within the EU, as “the reasonable counterpart” of the West in comparison with the Kosovo’s prime minister Albin Kurti. After the incident the European Parliament adopted a resolution to introduce measures against Serbia if proven to be directly involved in the attack /which is more or less already obvious/.
- The new draft proposal of EU for the creation off the Association of the Serbian Communities in North Kosovo is unacceptable for Belgrade, but the pressure by US and EU on A. Vucic for accepting it is getting stronger and stronger.
Unfortunately, one can’t expect the “the wind of change” to start blowing in Serbia because of the new elections. SNS is still dominating the political scene in the country and will be again first political power at the elections. It will be easy for SNS, together with the present coalition partners, to have a comfortable majority in the parliament /supported also by most of the minority parties/. Depending on the election results of the Socialist Party of Serbia /SPS/ one cannot exclude the possibility of seeing its leader, Ivica Dacic, as the new Serbian prime minister.
The so called “pro-European” Serbian opposition remains divided and without a leader who is able to unite the different opposition parties and civil movements around a joint political platform in a pre-election coalition. There is a small chance for the opposition to win the local elections in Belgrade, where the influence of the opposition is much stronger than in the rest of the country.
One of the main problem for the Serbian opposition remains the lack of bright personality, who is not connected with recent political past and is “clean” enough not to have his reputation ruined by the media controlled by Vucic and SNS. Until now the reputation of all opposition leaders with influence and political perspective were fiercely attacked by all media outlets close to the authorities, throwing a shadow of doubt for their political moral, private business and their participation in governing the country the last thirty years.
The support of nationalistic parties and coalitions is rising during the last year because of their propaganda against any solution on the Kosovo issue leading to recognition of its independence, the support for Russia and the populist demands in the economic sphere. The above might be the reason for the president Vucic to consider a coalition with Vojislav Seselj, the leader of the Serbian Radical Party.
Comment – Never the less the opposition was pressing for early election for a year now, the short time for pre-election campaign /only 45 days/ will not be enough for serious negotiations between the opposition parties and civil movements and creation of mutually accepted political platform.
The victory of SNS and its coalition parties is more or less guaranteed never the less we expect that their results will be a little worse than the previous elections. From the point of view of the president Vucic, a comfortable majority in the parliament but lacking constitutional majority will be a blessing for him, because no changes in the constitution concerning Kosovo will be possible, even if he is forced by the international community to bring a proposal for such to the Serbian parliament.
Our prognosis is that the forming of the new Sebian government again will take months, giving time to A. Vucic to wait calmly for the result of the elections for the new European parliament next spring and to see how is Donald Trump doing in the United States.
