Serbia reruns Belgrade vote marred by fraud allegations

(ANSA-AFP) - BELGRADE, MAY 31 - Nearly six months after a string of irregularities and accusations of fraud marred local polls in the Serbian capital, Belgrade on Sunday will hold a new round of voting in municipal elections. President Aleksandar Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) is heading into the contest with momentum, while the opposition camp has been struggling in recent months to remain united. The loose coalition of opposition parties and candidates that ran under the "Serbia Against Violence" banner during elections in December proved a tough competitor to the SNS and its coalition partners in Belgrade. The capital city remained an outlier in the contest, which saw the SNS and its allies secure a commanding victory during parliamentary polls held on the same day. The opposition secured 43 out of the 110 seats in the Belgrade municipal council compared to the 49 won by the SNS.
    But after weeks negotiating, the SNS was unable to form a city government and a fresh round of elections were announced in March. Following December's elections, a team of international observers slammed the contest over a string of "irregularities", including "vote buying" and "ballot box stuffing", after the opposition accused the ruling party of committing voter fraud.
    Thousands subsequently rallied in front of government offices in a series of protests that rattled the capital for weeks.
    Serbia's top court rejected an opposition move to have the vote annulled. - 'Missed opportunity' - The opposition, however, has struggled to hold the line, with arguments over the name of the coalition and possible boycotts creating divisions. "The opposition is in a bad shape and we can say it's a missed opportunity," Nikola Burazer, a Belgrade-based political analyst, told AFP. Ahead of the vote, Vucic has campaigned on an ultranationalist message to rally his base, already angered by last week's vote at the UN General Assembly to establish an annual day of remembrance for the 1995 Srebrenica genocide. The president was present for the vote in New York, where draped in a Serbia flag he slammed the resolution, saying it would "open old wounds and that will create complete political havoc". "I came to support Aleksandar Vucic in every way," said pensioner Sladjana Merdjic before a rally in Belgrade on Tuesday, where attendees wore shirts that read: "We are not a genocidal people". To curb potential fraud, a law backed by the opposition was passed this month, prohibiting anyone who has moved in the last year from voting in their new constituency. The measures follow accusations in December that Serbs from neighbouring Bosnia were bused into Belgrade to cast votes illegally. The Serbia Against Violence movement was formed in the wake of back-to-back mass shootings in the country last year, which spurred hundreds of thousands to take to the streets in demonstrations that morphed into anti-government protests over several months. Vucic has repeatedly dismissed his critics and the protests as a foreign plot, warning that Serbia would be directionless without his leadership. (ANSA-AFP).