Serbia’s pro-EU Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic won a landslide victory in general elections, the electoral commission confirmed yesterday after nearly all ballots were counted.
Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party won 48.25% of the vote, giving him 131 MPs in the 250-seat parliament - down from 158 in the last election, the commission said based on 98% of votes counted.
The Socialists, Vucic’s coalition partners in the outgoing government, came second with 11.01% of the vote.
They were followed by the far-right Radicals led by ultra-nationalist Vojislav Seselj, who won 8.05% of the vote. Seselj was recently acquitted of war crimes charges arising from the 1990s Balkans conflicts.
The anti-EU and pro-Russian Radicals saw a resurgence of support and were set to return to parliament with 21 MPs, after failing to win any seats in 2012 and 2014.
Four other political groupings also made it past the 5% threshold needed to enter parliament, according to the commission.
They were the centrist Democratic Party, a new liberal party called “Enough is Enough” (“Dosta je bilo”), a liberal coalition led by former Serbian president Boris Tadic, and a eurosceptic and pro-Russian coalition called DSS-Dveri.
Several groups representing ethnic minorities - for which there is no threshold - will also be present in the assembly following the vote - Serbia’s third in four years.
Vucic, premier since 2014, called the early election saying he needed a clear mandate to press ahead with the potentially-unpopular reforms required to join the European Union.
But critics saw the vote as an attempt to consolidate power, expressing concerns about the authoritarian tendencies of the 46-year-old premier, who has placed curbs on media freedom.
Vucic is a former ultra-nationalist ally of Seselj who has remodelled himself as a moderate reformist.
Sunday’s election respected “fundamental freedoms” and offered voters a range of choice but the campaign period caused some concern, according to observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
PACE delegation head Volodymyr Ariev referred to “abuse by incumbents of the administrative advantages of office”, “media coverage favourable to the ruling parties” and a “lack of full transparency in party and campaign funding”.
But Ariev said they “don’t have any information” about major electoral fraud after smaller parties claimed irregularities during voting.
Meanwhile, the government-appointed Fiscal Council cautioned yesterday that there must be no let-up in the austerity policies that Vucic’s government followed over the last two years to reduce a big budget deficit.
“There should be no slackening on ... public sector wages and pensions,” council chief Pavle Petrovic told a news conference.
The number of government employees must be cut, he added. “We are talking about 30,000 or 35,000 people.”
Bojan Pajtic, head of the opposition Democratic Party, told Reuters his party had complained to the Election Commission over the government’s tight grip on the media during the campaign and of numerous irregularities including vote-buying and non-existent voters.
Serbia, which has 18% unemployment, will have to undertake painful economic reforms both to qualify for EU membership and to meet the terms of a 1.2bn euro ($1.35bn) standby loan agreement with the IMF.
Petrovic reminded Vucic of the government’s promise not to extend protection from creditors for a group of big state-owned companies, including the RTB Bor copper mine and coal mine operator Resavica, beyond May 31.
“By then, the remaining 11 companies will lose protection from creditors. That means either privatisation or bankruptcy,” Petrovic said.
Zoran Stojiljkovic, political science professor at Belgrade University, said the elections were called to cement Vucic’s power before more unpopular austerity measures.
The EU was not an issue for most voters, he said. “The main issues for most are poverty, unemployment and corruption.”