Extraordinary elections in Serbia were organized for the Parliament of the Republic, for the Parliament of the Province of Vojvodina, and in 65 cities and municipalities, including Belgrade. By midnight on November 26, 2023, when the application deadline expired, 18 lists for the Republican Assembly were confirmed. There were high expectations for the elections in Belgrade, where the opposition has the strongest stronghold. However, members of election commissions representing the opposition point to numerous irregularities during the candidacy process, phantom parties and forged signatures. A characteristic example is the party founded before the elections by a former minister in the ruling Serbian Progressive Party government, which applied for the Belgrade elections with a list on which falsified signatures were discovered and as a party of the Bunjevac minority, thereby gaining the right to a lower electoral census.
After their staying in Serbia, observers from the Council of Europe announced that the election campaign was marked by “an unprecedented level of negative campaigning and fear-mongering, attacks against the opposition and journalists, and serious issues related to the media. Among the most disturbing examples is the message received by Đorđe Miketić from the opposition party Zajedno. From an unknown number, he was sent a photo, partly blurred, in which an intimate relationship with a woman is visible. Miketić published that message on the X network and stated that a year ago his apartment was broken into and his computer and hard drives were stolen. That all this may have something to do with blackmailing the authorities is indicated by the statement of President Vučić, who the day before called Miketić a “human disgrace” and insinuated that “he (Miketić) knows what I know” but that he must not talk about the details.
According the official results of the elections, participated by 18 electoral lists, the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) won 46.7%, followed immediately by the opposition coalition Serbia Against Violence with 23.69%. In third place was the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), which experienced a decline in these elections compared to the previous ones, only 6.55% of citizens voted for them, and the right-wing coalition Nada and the Mi-Glas iz naroda (We – the voice from the people party) Dr. Branimir Nestorović also pass the treshhold. Five minority lists also passed the threshold for entry into the republican parliament. It is notable that some right-wing parties that had deputies in the previous convocation of the parliament did not pass the census, as did the list on which the former president of Serbia, Boris Tadić, was.
In short, the outcome of the extraordinary elections would be thousands of complaints about irregularities and electoral fraud and the officially declared victory of the Serbian Progressive Party. According to Serbian high officials, electoral process was not compromised and its result will be future convocation of the republican parliament, out of 250 parliamentary seats, divided into the SNS 129 seats, 65 seats for the opposition, pro-Western coalition “Serbia against violence”, 18 seats for the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), while the conservative coalition NADA and the right-wing pro-government list “Mi-glas from the people” will have 13. Other mandates belong to parties of national minorities, Hungarians, Albanians, Bosniaks and a list that called itself the Russian Party and entered the parliament as a minority.
From the other hand, Serbia opposition, significant part of public, representatives of domestic and foreign NGO’s expressed their deep dissatisfaction both with pre-election climate and electoral irregularities. Observers from the Council of Europe announced after their stay in Serbia that the election campaign was marked by “an unprecedented level of negative campaigning and fear-mongering, attacks against the opposition and journalists, and serious issues related to the media”.
These extraordinary elections were also marked by the emergence of new social force, so called Proglas (Pro-vote), the initiative of a group of intellectuals and public figures aiming to invite citizens to go to the polls. They called all, from the former abstinent and the future voter, through the controller of election and pre-election machinations to the participants of the protest, emphasizing that there is a place for everyone and that everyone has their own role.
Aftermath of the December elections or main remarks on Serbian extraordinary elections and following reactions
The non-governmental organization CRTA, which monitors the election process, documented a series of organized frauds at election sites throughout Serbia. The biggest part is down to the manipulation of voter lists, where there were thousands of phantom voters from Republika Srpska, Croatia and Kosovo, or from municipalities where there were no elections, and who registered at addresses where they do not live.
Voters were registered at the addresses where there are sheds, garages, water supply service, even in the telephone exchange. As many as 129 voters were registered in an unfinished and unoccupied building in Belgrade, 96% of them without residence, which is a requirement for voting. Illustrative is the example that CRTA found by searching voter lists that a man with an unusual last name, Rikanović, together with his family of seven members, was registered at six polling stations in three different cities.
The reports of CRTA, as well as the opposition parties, are full of data on organized voter migrations, and the opposition estimated that around 40,000 voters were fictitiously registered in Belgrade alone. According to the program director of CRTA, Mr. Raša Nedeljkov, what was discovered is “only the tip of the iceberg”. Multiple statistical analyses, including analysis of rare names in the voter list, data from polling stations and information obtained from institutions and citizens, identified the following pattern: residences in Belgrade, necessary for voting in local elections, were registered immediately before the elections, in an organized and corrupt manner; voters were registered as a group at the same addresses, most often at those where there are no conditions for housing; “migrating” voters went to vote under escort; after the election, they were deleted from the voter list for Belgrade.
The preliminary assessment of the Election Day is that there were serious irregularities in 10% of the polling stations in the Belgrade and 5% in the parliamentary elections, and in Belgrade CRTA recognized patterns of organized voter migration in 14% of the polling stations.
Already on Election Day itself, when the media reported on buses from Republika Srpska that brought citizens to vote in Belgrade, it was clear that fraud was underway. This was seen and publicly stated by international observers, while some European parliamentarians requested an international investigation and called on the member states of the European Union not to accept the election results until that investigation is completed.
Vladimir Bilčik, the EP’s special rapporteur for Serbia, said that the public space in Serbia is captured by personal interests, as well as those frequent and early elections in Serbia cause stress among people and prevent the implementation of what is important in Serbia’s negotiations for EU membership. He added that European election observers were also present on the day of voting in Serbia, and that it was noticed that voters were brought in from other places in order to increase the number of voters.
Member of the European Parliament, Viola von Cramon, emphasized that she was an observer in numerous elections, but that in 20 years she has not witnessed such a situation as in December in Serbia. Referring to the mass migration of SNS voters to Belgrade, as well as the bringing of people from Republika Srpska, Von Kramon stated that it is clear that the elections were stolen and the situation is such that an international investigation is needed, as in the case of the 1996 elections. Speaking about the elections in Belgrade, she estimated that the opposition would have won if the elections had not been stolen, and in addition, they are preventing them from submitting a request to the Constitutional Court of Serbia for their annulment by manipulating the publication in the official newspaper with backdating.
In his addressing before members of the Bundestag’s EU affairs Committee, Mr. Nedeljkov stated that the elections in Serbia “turned out to be less of a mechanism for changing the government, and more like a parade of unattainable initial advantages of the ruling party, acquired through systematic abuse of state institutions and laws, in order to prevent the possibility of the elections changing anything”.
According to him, the inaccuracy of the voter list counts at least 30,000 voters. CRTA collected undeniable facts that indicate that the shortcomings of the official voter registration are being used to implement illegal and illegitimate electoral engineering for the sake of altering the electoral will of the voters.
After the discussion in the German Bundestag, a repeat of Belgrade elections was requested. “We expect the country that is negotiating to join the European Union from 2014 to hold free and fair elections. Instead, it seems that the recent elections in Serbia were systematically manipulated by the state”, implied from the statement signed by the spokesmen for European policy of the SDP parliamentary group of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the Alliance 90/Greens and the FDP, calling on the European Commission to review the attitude towards the authorities in Serbia.
As one might expect so, the authorities in Serbia reject all accusations, and President Vučić, responding to the criticism of international institutions, declared that the December elections “were the fairest in the history of Serbia”. Serbian President commented that among more than 20 European politicians who requested that the European Union launch an investigation into allegations of fraud in the December elections in Serbia, there is not a single friend of Belgrade.
When comes to the coalition “Serbia against violence”, they focused on its post-election political struggle in Belgrade, demanding that the entire election process and its result should be annulled in the capital. According to the final results published by GIK, Aleksandar Vučić’s list received 49 mandates, and “Serbia against violence” 43. The NADA list received seven, “We – Voice of the People” six, and the Socialists five mandates. The Assembly of Belgrade has 110 councilor seats.
The fact that Serbia against violence coalition, despite the media blockade and short election campaign, won more than in the previous elections – 902,450 unbribed voters – makes it a respectable factor on the political scene (1,783,701 voted for Vučić’s list). But it seems that now they lack a clear idea of what to do next especially when they used all legal remedies that were at their disposal.
Firstly, they filed an appeal to the City Election Commission (GIK), but it announced as incompetent and referred the complaint to the jurisdiction of the Republic Election Commission. The Republican Election Commission (RIK) rejected the “Serbia against Violence” list’s objection to the overall report on the election results as unfounded. Vladimir Dimitrijević, RIK President, rejected the claims of the opposition coalition, saying that all legal deadlines have expired. He assessed the remarks as general and added that “the overall election results are determined based on the reports from the polling stations and do not go into the alleged violation of other laws, for example on the voter list or abuse of state resources. According to the RIC’s adopted report, mandates will be distributed to representatives of 10 electoral lists, five of which are minority.
After rejection of all objections to the regularity of the elections, the coalition Serbia against Violence turned to the Constitutional Court. The request to annul the elections in Belgrade was submitted day after the RIK’s decision, on January 18 2024, due to numerous irregularities. Despite the fact that the circumstances indicate the need for urgent action, the Law on the Constitutional Court does not prescribe a deadline for making a decision on election disputes.
The protests of the opposition parties and its supporters, which began immediately after the elections, continued on January 16, after the holiday break. Unfortunately, the overwhelming impression is that the protests that followed the elections have not yielded too many results. Even more, one gets the impression that the authorities do not care whether there are a few thousand or 100,000 people on the streets. From the point of view of the authorities, it is so, because they are trying to minimize people’s dissatisfaction. That is how should be interpreted the fact that the Republic Election Commission announced the final results unusually quickly. Following that line it may be assumed that the new government will be formed unusually quickly.
Conclusion
Serbian December extraordinary parliamentary and provincial elections, held in 65 municipalities and cities, including Belgrade, the opposition, domestic and international observers described as elections marked with numerous irregularities. The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) announced on December 18 that the elections were marked by the abuse of public funds, the spread of fear and the media dominance of Aleksandar Vučić. The non-governmental organization CRTA assessed that the organized migration of voters affected the outcome of the results in Belgrade. The state leadership and the Serbian Progressive Party rejected these allegations. In this respect, the latest messages from the US administration give to Serbian opposition and dissatisfied citizens a reason for additional concern – the opposition is called to continue the fight through legal means, that is, through institutions. The opposition warned that, at least, it will be difficult to count on any success when the state authorities were directly involved in electoral engineering, supporting ruling party, and when all institutions are under the strict control of the regime.
Source: China Cee
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