BELGRADE (Serbia), June 22 (SeeNews) – Serbia's ruling populist conservative Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) has claimed a landslide victory in a parliamentary vote amidst a boycott by major opposition parties.
SNS has won 63.4% of the votes, but the result is expected to rise to more than 64% when the results from abroad are counted, Serbia's President and SNS leader Aleksandar Vucic told a news conference aired by public broadcaster Radio Beograd 1 late on Sunday.
"Tonight, we received more than two million votes out of 3.3 million people who voted," Vucic said.
According to the first preliminary official results of the country's election commission, based on the ballots cast in 2.32% of the polling stations, SNS won 63.35% of the vote amid a turnout of about 42%, versus 10.67% for a coalition led by the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), a partner of SNS in the current government. The election commission will announce the results of the election within 96 hours after the closure of polling stations.
"We are ready to continue the cooperation [with SNS]. Serbia is in such a political situation that political stability is a precondition for how strong it will be. SNS has an absolute majority," the leader of SPS and foreign minister in the current government, Ivica Dacic, told a news conference broadcast live by Tanjug news agency.
A total of 21 parties and coalitions are running for 250 seats in parliament. The vote, originally scheduled for April 26, was postponed to June 21 due to the state of emergency imposed by the government in order to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).
Only one more party claimed that it managed to pass the electoral threshold, although it was reduced to 3% from 5% in January. The Serbian Patriotic Alliance (SPAS), a populist conservative party describing itself as a centre-right organisation which participated in general elections for the first time in its history, secured about 4% of the vote, according to exit polls conducted by agencies Ipsos and Cesid.
The leader of SPAS, Aleksandar Sapic, mayor of the New Belgrade municipality of the Serbian capital and former professional water polo player, said his party is ready to negotiate a potential coalition with SNS. "If they [SNS] want, we will talk," Sapic told a news conference late on Sunday.
Exit polls suggest that no other party or coalition managed to exceed the 3% threshold. The monarchist national conservative Movement for the Restoration of the Kingdom of Serbia (POKS) won 2.7% of the vote, while the rightist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) of Vojislav Seselj received the support of 2.0% of voters, according to exit polls.
Four of the main opposition parties - Alliance for Serbia, the Social Democratic Party (SDS) of former president Boris Tadic, centre-left Together for Serbia (ZZS) and reformist Civic Platform of diplomat Jovan Jovanovic, are boycotted the elections, claiming that they would be unfair.
Former Belgrade mayor Dragan Djilas, the founder of Alliance for Serbia, said the boycott fulfilled its meaning as the low turnout represented a response to the "regime" of Vucic. "The regime was completely exposed and today everyone could see what Serbia looks like, threats to voters, vote-buying, Bulgarian trains, individuals who voted several times, threats by phone, all this was officially recorded at more than 5% of polling stations," Djilas said in a video file posted on the website of Tanjug.
Alliance for Serbia, established before the local elections in Belgrade held in March 2018, organised a series of protests against what it sees as an increasingly autocratic rule by Vucic and the government coalition led by SNS. Protests have been held in 60 Serbian cities in addition to Belgrade for 16 weekends in a row since December 7, 2018, following the assault on Borko Stefanovic, leader of Serbian Left party.
A coalition led by SNS won 131 of 250 seats in Serbia's parliament in the early general election held on April 24, 2016. The incumbent SNS-led government is supported by 165 MPs.