Published December 11,2023
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Just 18 months after being re-elected president, Serbia’s long-time chief Aleksandar Vucic is trying to tighten his grip on energy with one other spherical of elections, in a dangerous gambit following months of protest.
While Vucic is not going to be on the poll in Sunday’s parliamentary and native elections, the president stays all over the place in Serbia — plastered on billboards and skyscrapers, featured in social media movies and 24-hour protection on news channels.
For the Belgrade-based Centre for Research, Transparency and Accountability, Vucic’s “appearances… are creating the impression that presidential, rather than parliamentary, provincial, and local elections are taking place”.
“President Vucic occupies almost half of the time and space in the informative-political content of the most influential media,” the assume tank mentioned in a report.
The 53-year-old has rigorously cultivated the picture of a tireless chief, devoted to funding and job creation.
Sunday’s vote will function a referendum on Vucic’s authorities following back-to-back shootings earlier this yr that spurred mass demonstrations.
Vucic and his ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) can be below further stress as hovering inflation saps the general public’s spending energy.
To fight the scourge, Vucic has been on a spending spree forward of the December 17 contest, offering money handouts to households and the aged together with a rise in pensions.
“My job is not to align myself with [European policy], but to follow my people, the citizens of Serbia. As long as that’s my job, that’s how it will be,” Vucic informed a rally this month.
– Loved and hated –
To his supporters, Vucic’s stint in workplace has introduced order and billions in investments to the as soon as chaotic nation because of his success at balancing ties between the East and West.
But opponents say Vucic has more and more relied on autocratic measures to maintain the opposition in disarray and media retailers below his thumb, together with cracking down on dissenting voices.
The opposition had been calling for early elections since May following two deadly shootings in Serbia — together with a bloodbath at Belgrade elementary faculty — that triggered a mass motion towards the federal government and introduced tens of hundreds of individuals onto the streets.
The Serbia Against Violence motion is hoping to resuscitate Serbia’s perennially divided and anaemic political opposition, with observers intently watching native elections within the capital, the place Vucic’s allies will doubtless face their largest challenges.
For months, Vucic has repeatedly dismissed the protests as a political stunt and usually aired accusations that international powers had been orchestrating the rallies.
A former ultra-nationalist ally of strongman Slobodan Milosevic, the politician has held energy in some kind or one other since 2012.
The president has lengthy boasted of overseeing development of intensive infrastructure programmes, together with a community of highways and a revamped rail line.
And whereas he has sought funding from overseas, Vucic has remained a devoted defender of points vital to voters — particularly by refusing to recognise the independence of the breakaway province of Kosovo.
Talks with the Pristina authorities over hammering out a landmark deal to pave the best way for a semblance of normalised ties all however crumbled earlier this yr, with Vucic refusing to signal the EU and US-backed settlement — citing a ache in his proper hand that may doubtless final “years”.
SUDDEN CHANGE
It has been a formidable turnaround for the person who broke onto the nationwide political scene as Milosevic’s hardline info minister in the course of the warfare in Kosovo.
The change was sudden.
In 2008, he left the ultra-nationalist Radical Party and based the conservative, pro-European SNS, which gained the 2012 legislative elections, paving his method to the highest workplace.
He has rotated by means of a variety of different positions together with prime minister, deputy premier and defence chief.
But at the same time as he polished his picture, Vucic has been reluctant to desert some ultra-nationalist leanings.
He has repeatedly stopped wanting denouncing Bosnian Serb leaders accused of atrocities in the course of the Nineties conflicts, whereas a number of warfare criminals have been rehabilitated in state-backed media retailers below his watch.
Source: www.anews.com.tr