January 26 (SeeNews) - Serbia's prime minister Aleksandar Vucic by calling early elections is looking to capitalise on his high popularity, which exceeds that of his conservative Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), and to make more room for the policies he wants to push through, political analyst Dusan Janjic told SeeNews.
Earlier this month Vucic said he decided to call snap elections in an attempt to unblock reforms and to prepare Serbia for EU membership. The government needs a full mandate that would allow it by 2020 to complete the reforms it has undertaken and would take Serbia out on a good and safe path, Vucic said at the time, without naming a date for the vote.
Serbia's coalition government comprises the SNS, the left-wing Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and Socialdemogratic Party of Serbia (SDP Srbije).
Vucic lacks support from his coalition partners on four key issues - economic and institutional reforms, including amendments to the Constitution which would entail a drop in the number of MPs; the start of accession talks with the EU; and making progress towards normalisation of relations with Kosovo, Janjic told SeeNews over the phone in a recent interview.
“According to recent polls, Vucic enjoys the approval of 500,000 people more than his party. If you translate these numbers into hypothetical election results, it would show 42-39% of voter support going to Aleksandar Vucic and only around 35% to his party," Janjic, who is also leader of a new political formation, Active Serbia, said.
One reason for the gap is that the SNS rarely speaks in one voice, as Serbia's president Tomislav Nikolic and Vucic himself, both founders of the party, often take different stances, and another one is that the party representatives in the local government are often unfit for the positions they hold, Janjic noted.
The prime minister's well-publicised take on the restructuring of state-owned enterprises, the agreements with the IMF aiming to tighten public spending, and the steps to streamline the work of the state administration have added to his popularity, the analyst added.
Furthermore, the government's humanitarian approach to the refugee crisis improved markedly Serbia's standings with the EU and the country's EU accession prospects, which in turn has boosted pro-EU sentiment and, ultimately, raised Vucic's approval ratings, the analyst commented.
According to a recent survey conducted by local political theory magazine Nova Srpska Politicka Misao, if elections were to be held today, 43% would vote for the SNS.
According to another poll conducted by local agency Faktor Plus, apart from the main political parties, two Eurosceptical political formations - the far-right Radical Party of alleged war criminal Vojislav Seselj and the pro-Russian coalition DSS-Dveri - are set to enter parliament, local media reported.
Currently, the SNS, which emerged from the Radical Party, controls 135 of the 250 seats in Serbia's parliament. Twenty-five seats are taken by the SPS of late dictator Slobodan Milosecvic, who was also tried for war crimes in the Hague International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia before his death in 2006. The Democratic Party has 14 MPs. Eleven seats are controlled by a faction of the Democratic Party led by ex-president Boris Tadic and as many by the United Pensioners Party, the Social-Democratic Party has ten seats, independents and other smaller parties occupy the remaining seats.