(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).
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