#Belgrade 2024 Parliamentary Election

[suetravelblog]

Belgrade Serbia - Music, Galleries, History

Triangle of Serbian National Institutions Nikola Pašić Sq.– Elorna It will be fantastic returning to Belgrade! Mediterranean resort towns like Datça are healthy and relaxing, but after a rejuvenating stay, I’m happy to be back in a city. The trip from Tukey to Serbia will be tiring – Datça – Marmaris – Istanbul – Belgrade – but I’m not complaining. The worst part is packing heavy winter clothes…

[beardedmrbean]

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia’s populist Prime Minister Milos Vucevic resigned Tuesday in an attempt to calm political tensions and pressure roiled by weeks of massive anti-corruption protests over the deadly collapse of a concrete canopy.

The canopy collapse in November, which killed 15 people in the northern city of Novi Sad, has become a flashpoint reflecting wider discontent with the increasingly autocratic rule of Serbia’s populist President Aleksandar Vucic. He has faced accusations of curbing democratic freedoms in Serbia despite formally seeking European Union membership for the troubled Balkan nation.

“It is my appeal for everyone to calm down the passions and return to dialogue,” Vucevic told a news conference announcing his resignation.

Novi Sad Mayor Milan Djuric also stepped down on Tuesday.

Vucevic’s resignation could lead to an early parliamentary election. The resignation must be confirmed by Serbia’s parliament, which has 30 days to choose a new government or call a snap election.

Pro-government media said President Vucic will attend a Cabinet session on Tuesday evening to decide whether a new prime minister-designate will be appointed or an early election called.

Opposition parties have said they would insist on a transitional government that would create conditions for a free and fair election. Vucic's populists have faced accusations of irregularities during past elections.

Vucevic became the prime minister in April 2024, after the Serbian Progressive Party won most votes in an election marred by tensions.

“They (ruling party) have been in a free fall since the Novi Sad tragedy,” journalist Slobodan Georgiev said on N1 television, adding that Vucic was seeking a “buffer” with the prime minister's resignation.

Protests are the biggest challenge yet to the ruling populists

Vucic in the past had managed to cushion the impact of anti-government street protests, but the current student movement has garnered widespread support from all walks of life, including actors, farmers, lawyers and judges.

The students' call for justice has resonated in a country where corruption is widespread and few feel that the state institutions work in the interests of citizens.

Branimir Jovancicevic, professor at the Faculty of Chemistry in Belgrade, expressed hope that Vucevic's resignation is a first step toward further political changes in Serbia, where power is concentrated in the hands of the president although his constitutional role is largely ceremonial.

“If the president thinks that by replacing one, essentially, unimportant figure ... will solve the problem ... he is deeply mistaken," said Jovancicevic. ”This must lead to total political changes because autocracy and dictatorship in Serbia, in the heart of Europe, must be stopped.”

On Monday, tens of thousands of people joined striking university students in a 24-hour blockade of a key traffic intersection in the Serbian capital. Serbia's students are demanding accountability for the canopy collapse that critics have blamed on rampant government corruption.

Classes at Serbia's universities and dozens of schools have been blocked for two months with students camping inside their faculty buildings.

In another attempt to defuse tensions, Vucic, Vucevic and Parliament Speaker Ana Brnabic on Monday evening urged dialogue with the students, who have so far rebuffed such invitations. They say Vucic shouldn't be the one holding talks with them but that government institutions such as police and the judiciary should do their job.

Another student is assaulted

Vucevic said the immediate cause for his quitting was an attack on a female student in Novi Sad early Tuesday by assailants allegedly from the ruling Serbian Progressive Party. Vucevic said that “whenever it seems there is hope to return to social dialogue, to talk ... it’s like an invisible hand creates a new incident and tensions mount again.”

But the outgoing prime minister also said that the street protests “undoubtedly” have been organized from abroad “with an aim to directly jeopardize Serbia as a state.” Vucevic offered no evidence for his claims that echoed earlier similar statements by Vucic.

“I can never justify or understand many of these protests, blockades of lives, of roads and the freedom of movement of other citizens,” he said.

Students in Novi Sad said they were horrified by the assault they said was carried out by thugs with baseball bats. They attacked two groups of students and chased them in their car, the students said. Prosecutors later said that four people have been detained.

“We are horrified over the state of our society where such a situation is possible,” the students said in an Instagram post. “We have had enough of blood.”

The students called a big rally in Novi Sad later Tuesday in response to the attack.

Doubts over prosecutions

Serbia’s prosecutors have filed charges against 13 people, including a government minister and several state officials for the November canopy collapse. But the former Construction Minister Goran Vesic, who had resigned shortly after the canopy crash, has been released from detention, fueling doubts over the investigation’s independence.

The main railway station in Novi Sad was renovated and inaugurated twice in recent years as part of a wider infrastructure deal with Chinese state companies and a fast railway link with neighboring Hungary.

Several incidents have marred the street demonstrations in the past weeks, including drivers ramming in to the crowds on two occasions, when two young women were injured.

Students and others have been holding daily 15-minute traffic blockades throughout Serbia at 11:52 a.m., the exact same time the concrete canopy crashed down on Nov. 1. The blockades honor the 15 victims, including two children. The blockades were also held on Tuesday.

[mariacallous]

According to Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, the country’s recent parliamentary elections were the “cleanest and most honest” in its history. They were also a triumph for his misnamed Serbian Progressive party (SNS), which won by a landslide. But the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe had a different take.

The 17 December poll, said a statement by its international observer team, took place in “unjust conditions”, marred by “bias in the media, pressure on public sector employees and misuse of public resources”. Instances of intimidation and “serious irregularities” including vote-buying and ballot-stuffing were noted. Other allegations have been made that Bosnian Serbs were bussed-in en masse to fraudulently vote in Belgrade.

Flouting of democratic norms and the rule of law in Serbia has gradually accelerated since the SNS took power over a decade ago – a textbook process of state capture, overseen by the president since 2017. An autocratic nationalist whose political instincts were forged in the Milošević era, Mr Vučić also uses his power and influence to foment discord in the western Balkans, where secessionist ethnic Serb campaigns are supported by Belgrade. But the ambition to draw Serbia within the EU’s orbit – and away from Russian influence – has muted western criticism to a compromising degree, particularly since the invasion of Ukraine.

This emollient approach may soon run out of road. Days of demonstrations have followed the disputed elections, building on a burgeoning anti-Vučić protest movement that began in the summer. Last weekend, tens of thousands gathered at a Belgrade square also used to oppose Slobodan Milošević’s rule, and called for a largely silent Europe to back their cause. In a sign of where the government’s instinctive sympathies lie, Mr Vučić’s prime minister, Ana Bnrabić, thanked Russia for providing supposed evidence that the protests were orchestrated in the west.

Intimations of renewed regional conflict promise to force a tougher line in Brussels and Washington. In November, Mr Vučić ominously predicted that 2024 will bring “much more conflict and unrest” in both Kosovo and Republika Srpska – the ethnic Serb entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the latter, the separatist Bosnian Serb leader, Milorad Dodik, has threatened to rip up the 1995 Dayton peace agreement in the name of Serb national unification. In Kosovo – whose independence Belgrade continues to refuse to recognise – serious outbreaks of conflict in the ethnically Serb north have raised fears of a future secession attempt.

Hopes that the prospect of EU membership would persuade Serbia’s government to abide by democratic norms at home, and refrain from undermining neighbouring states, have proved unfounded. But the strategic goal of isolating Russia – also unfulfilled – means that the west continues to allow Mr Vučić too much licence to pursue his authoritarian, ethno-nationalist agenda.

As one of the chief investors in Serbia’s growing economy, the EU is viewed favourably by much of the population and has economic and diplomatic leverage to deploy if it chooses. Up to now it has opted not to do so, through an understandable fear – shared by Joe Biden’s administration – of leaving the Balkans even more open to the influence of Moscow and Beijing. But as he entrenches himself still further in the EU’s eastern backyard, treating Mr Vučić as a kind of prodigal son who will eventually mend his ways is not working.

[mariacallous]

Less than two years since they last voted in parliamentary and Belgrade city elections, voters in Serbia are again going to the polls on Sunday. Elections will also be held for councils in 64 more cities and towns.

The three main opposition blocs are the “Serbia against Violence” coalition, named after the protest wave that followed two mass shootings in May, and two coalitions of right-wing parties.

The “Serbia against Violence” list includes the Freedom and Justice Party of former Belgrade mayor Dragan Djilas, the People’s Movement of Serbia, led by Miroslav Aleksic, and the Green-Left Front/Ne Davimo Beograd, which is known for its grassroots activism.

It also includes the Srce (Heart) movement, led by Zdravko Ponos, who came second to Aleksandar Vucic in the presidential elections in 2022, the Ecological Uprising, known for leading environmental protests, the Democratic Party, which led the country before Vucic’s Progressive Party, the liberal, pro-European Movement of Free Citizens and the Zajedno (Together) Party.

The right-wing parties that call themselves “the state-building opposition” failed to make a deal about jointly going to the elections. They are divided into the “National gathering” coalition, made up of Dveri (Doors) and Zavetnici [Oathkeepers], and the NADA (Hope) coalition, made up of the New Democratic Party of Serbia and the Movement for Renewal of Kingdom of Serbia, POKS.

Although most of the opposition is up against smear campaigns, private video leaks, fake support signatures, pre-election giveaways to citizens and more, a BIRN analysis suggests that some of them have a chance to do well in Belgrade and shake up Serbia’s numbed political scene.

During their finishing rally in Belgrade on Tuesday, Marinika Tepic, a “Serbia against Violence” list representative, said that “the decisive battle is ahead us on Sunday.

“We are choosing whether the mafia and the party will rule, or order, law and the constitution,” Tepic said.

Last year, the opposition in Belgrade won around 50,000 votes more than the parties of the ruling coalition, but failed to win power when the votes were translated into actual seats.

Meanwhile, two consecutive mass shootings in Belgrade, killing 19 people in total, triggered an outpouring of anger and frustration over what many Serbs saw as a culture of violence presided over by Vucic and his Serbian Progressive Party.

The parties organising the series of protests named “Serbia against violence” in October agreed to run jointly in coming elections.

Around 1.6 million people have the right to vote in Belgrade and 14 lists are on the ballot. Voters will elect 110 councillors to the Belgrade City Assembly, who then elect the mayor.

Opposition expectations are lower for the parliamentary elections. Some 6.5 million people have the right to vote for the 250 seats in parliament, eighteen lists are running and it is widely foreseen that the Serbian Progressive Party will win most of the seats.

The regular deadline for local elections in Serbia was spring 2024 and, as the ruling Progressives tend to combine multiple levels of elections, the current government’s mandate was expected to last until then.

But after the protests that followed the mass shootings in May as well as complications in relations with Kosovo, Vucic, using the opposition’s request as an excuse, decided to go for snap elections in December.

Experts told BIRN that Vucic knows the popularity of the Progressives is decreasing and that this is a better time to shore up support for a new government mandate ahead of further unfavourable political developments.

At a Progressive rally in Belgrade on December 2, Vucic – who is not an official participant in the campaign but is still its star – said: “Times are difficult in Kosovo and Metohija, I am sure they will be even more difficult, but we will never give up on our people and we will never turn our backs on them.”

This is third time that Kosovo Serbs will be casting their votes for a Serbian election. on the territory of Serbia, not in Kosovo.