Serbian snap election: Majority backs Vucic's populist party

Filip Svarm, editor-in-chief of the prestigious Serbian weekly magazine Vreme, is frustrated with the results of Serbia's snap parliamentary election. He already knows what will come next, he told DW: another bout of "unbridled power for the SNS."

Aleksandar Vucic's ruling Serbian Progressive Party won 47% of the ballots, enough to secure a comfortable majority for the coming years. It was already steering the country practically unopposed before the snap election.

Opposition is well behind

The pro-European opposition alliance Serbia Against Violence (SPN), consisting of 15 parties that range from center-right to green to left, came in second with about 23% of the popular vote. But for political scientist Dusan Milenkovic, these results are not bad.

He said the conservative and democratic parties had always struggled to get a foothold in Serbia. Thus, these results were actually some of the best in the history of Serbia's multiparty system.

The coalition emerged in response to massive anti-government protests triggered by two deadly mass shootings earlier this year. It was the protests and increasingly tense relations with Kosovo that inspired Vucic to call a snap election two years ahead of schedule.

Accusations of vote-rigging

As expected, election observers and non-governmental organizations have flagged several concerns regarding vote rigging. Some 40,000 external voters were allegedly brought to Belgrade and other Serbian cities to vote for SNS using forged IDs.

Most of them are said to have come in organized bus transports from Republika Srpska, a Serb-majority entity in neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina. While these voters might be ethnic Serbs, they are formally Bosnian nationals and, therefore, do not have the right to participate in Serbian elections. The opposition filed a complaint and called for protests the day after the election.

"Serbia has voted, but the OSCE has reported abuse of public funds, intimidation of voters, and cases of vote buying," the German foreign ministry said in a post on social media platform X, referring to accusations by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. "That is unacceptable for a country with EU candidate status."

The Vucic playbook

The landslide victory of the SNS is primarily thanks to Vucic himself. The populist ruler, denounced by critics as an autocrat, did not stand for elections but dominated the campaign . The SNS list campaigned with "Aleksandar Vucic — Serbia must not stand still." According to a poll by the Serbian election observation mission CRTA, one out of four Serbian citizens thought that Vucic himself was running for elections, and 60% believed that he was his party's lead candidate.

There are several reasons why Vucic has such an undisputed grip on Serbian politics. The "Vucic system" benefits from the fact that about 10% of the adult population — in a country with a population of 6.8 million — are SNS members. Vucic is known to reward party membership and votes with jobs and cash handouts.

Domestically, Vucic has boosted his popularity by stirring nationalist sentiments regarding Kosovo. He tells Serbian nationalists precisely what they want to hear: "Kosovo must remain Serbian." It's a potential flashpoint that has concerned the European Union for years.

Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, which has since been recognized by the United States and most members of the EU. Serbia, Russia and several other European nations do not acknowledge the Republic of Kosovo.

Serbia's dual tracks between Russia and the EU

Serbia's most recent EU accession progress report was not too rosy. Not least, presumably, because Serbian strongman Vucic prefers to take an anti-Western stance while expressing a pro-Russian sentiment popular with large parts of the population. Nevertheless, experts say Vucic, who served as information minister under Slobodan Milosevic, is seen as a potential guarantor for stability and, therefore, handled with kid gloves.

The fact that Vucic has been tending to friendly Russo-Serbian ties has long been a thorn in the EU's side. But that hasn't stopped the bloc from repeatedly offering the Balkan state support. It's a risky business, says Rade Basta, Serbia's former minister of economy. On Sunday, Germany's most popular tabloid newspaper, Bild, quoted him as saying that Russia was reaching for influence in the Western Balkans in order to destabilize the EU. According to him, Russian President Putin was an indirect party to any negotiation that Vucic held with Brussels. Therefore, he recommended that Brussels accept the Western Balkan nations into the EU as quickly as possible to thwart Moscow's influence in the region.

Often referred to as the Western Balkans, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina have expressed their desire to join the EU for many years. All but Kosovo have been granted official candidate status.

This article was translated from German.