Serbian elections: Vučić remains in power
Presidential, parliamentary and local elections were held in Serbia on Sunday. The country's National Electoral Commission announced on Monday that Aleksandar Vučić will remain president after securing just under 60 percent of the vote. His challenger Zdravko Ponoš garnered just under 18 percent. Vučić's SNS party has, however, lost its absolute majority in parliament. Europe's press scrutinises the results.
Time to learn to swim
Peščanik is delighted that the opposition parties at least managed to secure a few seats in parliament:
“The regime led by Vučić is a disaster on the scale of a biblical flood for Serbia. But since we have been flooded for a decade, it's high time we learned to swim. So a little optimism: by entering parliament the parties, coalitions and movements of the opposition will now be able to institutionally secure at least partial funding. With this money, they can put their organisations on a more stable footing and prepare for the next elections.”
Rebellion the only option
These elections were clearly rigged, and the people of Serbia must take to the streets, Danas urges:
“What shall we do now, my dear Serbia? ... Rebel, rebel and rebel against this grotesque power! That is the law of reason. ... Now, after these elections that were stolen in advance, all parties that received several thousand votes from the citizens must call their supporters to the streets with a single demand: the resignation of the criminal government and the formation of an interim government to save Serbia.”
Vučić must adopt a clear stance
Vučić won't have it as easy on the international political scene as he does on the domestic front, comments Kapital:
“[He] finds himself in an increasingly difficult position in terms of foreign policy due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In his ten years in power he has flirted with both Russia and the EU, manoeuvring between the two and trying to extract concessions from them. But now he is under pressure to show whose side he is on. ... The EU has made clear its expectation that candidate countries like Serbia will follow its lead on sanctions and foreign policy in general. For Vučić it will become increasingly difficult to manoeuvre between the EU and Russia.”
Opposition too fragmented to win
Večer compares Vučić's victory with Orbán's:
“With enough support from the media elections can be won. They both know that, and so they won again on Sunday. They didn't just defeat the competition, they crushed it. Nobody stood a chance against Vučić and his Serbian Progressive Party anyway - the opposition was split into a multitude of parties, micro-coalitions and movements. In Hungary, the opposition was united for the first time, but politically too diverse. ... It could only set itself one programme goal: to oust Orbán and his Fidesz party, which was clearly too little to secure more than a third of the votes.”