Serbia holds parliamentary, local and provincial elections

2023-12-17 09:38:56, Kosova & Bota CNA

Serbia is holding extraordinary parliamentary, local and provincial elections on Sunday.

About 6.5 million inhabitants have the right to vote, who can use their right from 07:00 to 20:00.

8,273 polling stations are open.

The chairman of the Electoral Commission of Serbia, Vladimir Dimitrijevic, said in the first press conference that all the voting centers were opened on time.

"The electoral material is complete and correct, and all the voting centers were opened at 07:00", he said.

These are the fifth elections organized in Serbia since 2012, and are held only 18 months after the organization of the last election process.

Sunday's elections will be monitored by 5,587 domestic and foreign observers - a record number of observers, compared to elections held so far.

The election was prompted by growing public anger over this year's mass shootings and the opposition's continued demand for a new election process.

Two mass shootings in May that left 18 people dead, including nine schoolchildren and teenagers, have sparked weeks of street protests.

Opposition parties, and human rights observers, accuse the ruling party, the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), of the current president, Aleksandër Vucic, of restricting media freedom, supporting violence against opponents, of corruption, and of links to organized crime.

Vucic, and allies, reject these accusations.

Some public polls put Vucic's party as the winner of the elections, in second place the coalition of opposition parties, and third, the Socialist Party of former Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic, which is a coalition partner with SNS.

Kosovo Serbs travel to Serbia to vote

Serbia holds parliamentary, local and provincial elections

Kosovo Serb residents were seen on Sunday morning leaving for Serbia, to vote for the elections organized there.

It is reported that at the border points between Kosovo and Serbia - Merdare, Jarinje and Bërnjak - long columns have been created.

The Serbs will take this route to exercise their right, since the election process will not take place in Kosovo, compared to years ago.

They will vote in four cities in the south of Serbia - in Vranje, Kurshumli, Raskë and Tutin.

The government of Kosovo has requested that the state of Serbia make a direct request to hold elections, but the official Belgrade has not done so, as it does not recognize the citizenship of Kosovo.

The last parliamentary elections, which Serbia has organized for the Serbian community in Kosovo, were those of June 21, 2020.

Those elections were held according to an earlier practice, where the mission in Kosovo of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) collected the votes. Those votes were then counted in Raska and Vranje, two border towns of Serbia.

Calling Albanians in Serbia

The Deputy Prime Minister of Kosovo, Besnik Bislimi, has called on the Albanians in the Presheva Valley to vote in the parliamentary elections in Serbia, saying that "the Serbian project to silence the Albanian voice must be met with resistance and insubordination".

The Albanians of the Valley compete this time with two lists.

In the previous parliamentary composition, Shaip Kamberi was the only representative of the Albanian community./ REL