March 26 (SeeNews) - The leadership of Serbia's ruling populist conservative party SNS has approved the potential calling of early parliamentary elections in June, the country's president Aleksandar Vucic has said after several months of anti-government protests.
"The SNS' board has unanimously approved the calling of snap elections in June, with one abstention - mine," Vucic said in a video file posted on the YouTube channel of private broadcaster TV Zona plus on Monday.
The 30-member board of SNS also entrusted Vucic with the launch of negotiations with potential coalition partners, excluding opposition Alliance for Serbia.
The decision is not final but it brings Serbia closer to a snap vote than ever before, Vucic added.
Serbia is set to hold regular parliamentary elections in the spring of next year.
Alliance for Serbia organised a series of protests against what it sees as an increasingly autocratic rule by Vucic and the SNS-led government. Protests have been held in 60 Serbian cities in addition to Belgrade for 16 weekends in a row since December 7, following the assault on Borko Stefanovic, leader of the Serbian Left party.
In the most violent weekend of anti-government rallies in the country since December 7 protesters broke into the building of Serbian state television and blocked Vucic's headquarters building in Belgrade for several hours on March 16.
A total of 165 out of 250 members of Serbia's parliament support the SNS-led coalition government of prime minister Ana Brnabic. Three opposition parties in parliament are members of Alliance for Serbia - the centre-left Democratic Party, Dveri, and the People's Party, holding a total of 24 seats.
A coalition led by SNS won 131 of 250 seats in Serbia's parliament in the early general election held on April 24, 2016.