Some already see it as a Serbian “Maidan”. On the evening of Sunday, December 24, a crowd of opponents of President Aleksandar Vucic presented themselves, armed with Serbian and some European flags, in front of Belgrade town hall to contest the results of the legislative elections of December 17. They saw the presidential party SNS (nationalist right) win with 46.72% of the votes. Under loud whistles from the packed square and slogans comparing Vucic to Putin, some demonstrators threw stones, sticks and eggs at the building, breaking windows. They even tried to force their way in before being pushed back by the police who dispersed the place with pepper spray around 10 p.m.
“There is no revolution underway”, the Serbian president reacted immediately on the pro-government channel Pink TV. He said two police officers had been “seriously injured” in what he judges to be an attempt to “takeover by force of state institutions”adding that he had “strong evidence” whereby “everything was prepared in advance”. Understand: from abroad.
“Imported” pro-power voters?
Not yet a revolution but still a political crisis which has been growing for a week. The December 17 vote drew widespread criticism after a team of international observers – including representatives of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) – denounced a series of“irregularities”notably “vote buying” And “ballot stuffing”. Critics in the country with hundreds of people who demonstrated daily in front of the electoral commission, but also internationally. Germany thus described the alleged fraud as“unacceptable” for a country hoping to join the European Union. The United States called on Belgrade to respond to “concerns” election observers, and the EU declared that “Serbia’s electoral process requires tangible improvements and further reforms”.
This Monday, demonstrators were already back on the streets to block a small artery in the center of the capital where the headquarters of the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government is located. Mainly students from the “Borba” (Combat) organization, who are demanding the revision of the electoral list which, according to them, is at the origin of electoral fraud.
The leader of the Serbian opposition, Marinika Tepic, went on hunger strike with six other parliamentarians to “alert in Serbia and abroad” on this supposed fraud and demand a new vote. She was head of the list of a united opposition movement, born from demonstrations against the endemic violence in Serbia, which Aleksandar Vucic is accused of trivializing. Putting his health “in danger”according to her party, this 49-year-old former journalist has set up a makeshift bed on the bench of Parliament in Belgrade and receives daily infusions. “I try not to think about death. I don’t see it as a sacrifice, but as a fight, and a way to keep myself aliveshe justified herself to the press. I have no intention of giving up until this rigged election is overturned, they admit there was voter fraud, and the will of the people is upheld. » She accuses the President of having “imported” votes beyond Serbian borders during the vote after international observers also cited information on “voters living abroad and brought by bus by the ruling party to vote in Belgrade”.
Russia in support of Vucic
For the moment, Aleksandar Vucic refuses to give anything to the critics. “I would like to ask everyone who is on hunger strike not to do so. They can organize demonstrations every day, I am used to demonstrations”, he declared on Sunday before the Belgrade meeting was held. He still threatens those who do it half-heartedly, warning that the authorities are “in capacity” to arrest and judge those responsible for incidents like those that occurred Sunday evening. “No one has the right to destroy our house, destroy the property of our country and our citizens, or seriously injure our police officers”he repeated on Pink TV.
In the background of this political crisis, the very Russophile profile of the Serbian head of state. While the war in Ukraine has rather brought the countries on the EU periphery closer to Brussels, Serbia has followed the opposite path. Belgrade, which has long flirted with Moscow and Beijing, does not apply any of the European sanctions against Russia. “All the discontent and attempts to destabilize Vucic’s power are linked above all to his firm desire not to join the anti-Russian sanctions”, assured the Russian ambassador in Belgrade, Alexandre Botsan-Kharchenko, after being received this Monday by Aleksandar Vucic. In “confidential conversation”the Serbian president assured him that “the opposition began protests encouraged and supported from outside”.
A little earlier, the Kremlin had also commented on Sunday evening’s demonstration. “It is obvious that the collective West seeks to destabilize the situation in the country”, declared Russian diplomatic spokesperson Maria Zakharova, quoted by the public agency RIA Novosti. She even goes so far as to compare the latest demonstrations in Serbia to those of Maidan in Kyiv in 2014, which resulted in pro-Westerners coming to power in Ukraine. The comparison is also made by numerous pro-European accounts on social networks, proof of the particular resonance of this start of a political crisis in the context of the Ukrainian conflict.
Updated Monday December 15 at 2:45 p.m.with the blocking of a street in central Belgrade.
Updated at 4:20 p.m.with the words of the Russian ambassador in Belgrade.