After massacres and protests
President Vucic announces new elections in Serbia
October 13, 2023, 9:34 a.m
Massacres, protests, clashes with Kosovo: the situation in Serbia is more than unsettled. President Vucic therefore wants to hold new elections this year. The opposition accuses him of governing in an authoritarian manner and of filling crucial positions in the judiciary, administration and media with loyalists.
In the face of massive protests against his government, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has announced early parliamentary elections on December 17th. “Serbia is at a turning point, the citizens should say what kind of politics they want,” said Vucic on the pro-government private TV channel Prva. He will call for early elections by November 2nd, as the constitution stipulates.
Two school shootings in May that left 18 dead, including a school massacre in Belgrade carried out by a 13-year-old, have sparked weekly anti-government demonstrations. The participants in the protests accuse the media controlled by Vucic of fomenting a climate of hatred and glorification of violence in the country.
The Serbs elected the current parliament in April of the previous year. The nationalist presidential party SNS, together with allies, has a comfortable majority. Early elections are common in Serbia. Vucic rules with authoritarian methods. The media, judiciary and administration are largely in the hands of followers of the president, who is also the SNS chairman.
The Vucic government has also maneuvered itself into a difficult situation in the conflict with Kosovo, a former Serbian province now inhabited almost exclusively by Albanians. On September 24th, a commando group that had invaded from Serbia attacked a town in northern Kosovo. Three Serbian paramilitaries and an Albanian police officer were killed in fighting. The EU-mediated talks between Serbia and Kosovo, which had already made no progress up to that point, are likely to become even more precarious. Experts are calling for the EU and the USA, which have so far shown a lot of understanding for Vucic, to impose punitive measures against Belgrade because of the aggression in northern Kosovo.