Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party was on track to win around half of the vote, with his Socialist coalition partners in second place with around 11 percent, according to independent observers at the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy (CESID).
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Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic declared a “historic triumph” in an early parliamentary election on Sunday, with his pro-Europe Progressive Party (SNS) set to win 56 percent of the vote, according to exit polls from CESiD.
Opinion polls suggest voters are set to grant Vucic’s pro-EU Serbian Progressive Party four more years in power on Sunday, but he will probably have to contend with a resurgent ultra-nationalist opposition demanding closer ties with Russian Federation. Two right-wing parties lagged far behind – the Radical Party with 8 per cent and DSS-Dveri with 5 per cent.
Before the vote there were fears in the West that Serbia could tilt further to the right and toward Russian Federation.
A party needs to win five percent of votes to enter parliament. Any rekindling of nationalism in the Balkans is considered more unsafe than in the rest of Eastern Europe because of the wars in the 1990s that claimed around 100,000 lives.
SRS leader Vojislav Seselj, whom the United Nations war crimes tribunal cleared of accusations related to the Yugoslav wars less than a month ago, will have more than 20 MPs in the Parliament.
The prime minister called the election just two years into his term, saying his government needed to renew its mandate before pressing ahead with political and economic reforms required by the European Union and International Monetary Fund, including the normalisation of relations with breakaway Kosovo and privatisation of state-owned businesses.
Vucic is a former ultra-nationalist ally of Seselj who has remodelled himself as a moderate reformist.
“Serbian citizens showed strong support for their country’s strategic objective to join the EU”, Mogherini and Hahn said in a joint statement, adding that “we look forward to working with the new government to consolidate Serbia’s progress towards joining the EU”.
05 percent of the vote.
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Serbia formally applied for European Union membership in 2009.
