Serbia's Election Crossroads

Serbia makes a choice

April 24 Serbia faces the early parliamentary elections. If there had not been an early dissolution of the national assembly, elections were to be held in 2018. However, Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić has insisted on holding early elections, citing the fact that the country needed a stable 4 years to complete negotiations on accession of Serbia to the EU.

Vucic strengthens power

The main purpose of early elections - to strengthen the position of the Serbian Progressive Party. Prime Minister Vucic feared that the results of his reforms had a negative impact on his popularity, including in the ranks of his own party. Already, some signs of discontent with his policies started to show. The reasons for them, such as the low level of economic standard, reducing social benefits and, more importantly, Vucic giving in to some of the demands set before him by the West: the EU and NATO. Serbia is a presidential-parliamentary republic, and while President Tomislav Nikolic is a more pro-Russian than Vucic, the entire executive branch is in the hands of the latter.

Pro EU positions of Vucic

Geopolitical position of the current Serbian leadership can be defined as pro European, moderately pro Russian, and friendly towards the NATO. The country is focused on joining the EU. Furthermore, Vucic has signed the last one in the series of five partnership agreement with the NATO that Serbia has made since the year 2000. At the same time, in the campaign Vucic uses his photos with Putin, made during a meeting at the highest level, using pro-Russian sentiments present in the general Serbian public. According to the official polls, his coalition will receive more than 50% in the Parliament. However, the leader of the Serbian Radical Party Vojislav Seselj announced at a press conference the results of secret sociological research which according to him was conducted specifically on request of Vucic in November last year. According to these data, progressives rack up only 34.6% of the votes, and the radicals - 20.4%. Is Seselj's information founded, or just the relust of a pre electoral political bias, remains to be seen.

The geopolitical focus of parties

The geopolitical division is a major factor in Serbian politics. The major pro-Russian, Continentalist parties are the Serbian Radical Party and the coalition of movement "Dveri" with the Democratic Party of Serbia. Pro EU parties -are Vucic’s coalition "Serbia wins", and the Serbian Socialist Party. Coalitions that show atlanticist tendencies are the two main liberal lists, one based around the Democratic Party, and the other one formed by the aliance of former Serbian president Boris Tadic, Liberal Democratic Party leader Ceromir Jovanovic, and League of Social-democrats of Vojvodina leader, Nenad Canak. The most actively pro-Russian forces are largely supported by Serbian youth. According to a survey of one of the largest pro-NATO Serbian non-governmental organizations, the Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies 57% of young men and women support the establishment in Serbia Russian military bases and 64% support the foreign policy of Russia as a whole