Serbia announces parliamentary and local elections for December

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and President of the Assembly of Serbia Vladimir Orlić announced on Wednesday extraordinary parliamentary elections for 65 cities and municipalities, including Belgrade, to take place on 17 December.

With the announcement of new elections, Serbia’s National Assembly, elected on 3 April 2022, was dissolved before it had served even half of its four-year mandate.

The parliamentary election will coincide with local votes in 65 municipalities, including the capital Belgrade.

Experts say the vote and an absence of a working parliament, will allow Vucic to buy time and delay decisions over ties with independent and predominantly Albanian Kosovo, which Serbia still sees as its southern province.

“We are living in a time in which it is necessary for all of us to be united in the struggle for vital … interests of Serbia, in which we will be under numerous pressures, both because of our position on Kosovo, and because of other regional and global issues,” Vucic said after signing the decree.

Ursula von der Leyen, the EU executive’s president, said during a visit to Belgrade on Tuesday that both Serbia and Kosovo must step up their efforts to normalise relations after the most recent flare-up of violence, if they want to join the bloc.

The President of the Serbian Parliament, Vladimir Orlić, called on the citizens to participate in the elections so that, as he said, Serbia, as a society, would show its “full democratic capacity”.

The Government’s statement stated that holding new parliamentary elections under the existing circumstances would ensure, among other things, “a higher degree of democracy and a reduction of tensions between opposing options in society.

With the announcement of the elections, the pre-election campaign will officially begin in Serbia, which will last until December 14 at midnight, when the election silence begins.

This will be the 10th extraordinary parliamentary election since 1990, and since then, regular parliamentary elections have been held only three times: 1997, 2012 and 2020.

Serbia also needs to join Western sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, root out corruption and organised crime, reform the economy, improve the judiciary, the business climate and its human rights record.

Commentators say Vucic’s move is also aimed at solidifying his own ranks and reforming his ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), whose popularity has been dented after months of opposition protests, following the two mass shootings in May.

(Milena Antonijević/EURACTIV.rs with Reuters)