Serbian Protesters Demand Election Results Overturned: Largest Protest Yet in Belgrade

Thousands of people took to the streets of the Serbian capital Belgrade again on Saturday to demand that the election results be annulled. Local media report this. The profits of President Aleksandar Vučić’s party are fraudulent, according to the demonstrators.

A series of prominent Serbs took to a podium in central Belgrade to criticize Vucic and the election results, writes the Serbian broadcaster Nova. Among them was opposition politician Marinika Tepić, who is on hunger strike in protest. At another location in the city, a group of students blocked an intersection for 24 hours until Saturday afternoon.

Reuters news agency writes that the opposition has organized daily protests since the elections on December 17, but that this was the largest so far. On Sunday evening, demonstrators tried to enter Belgrade City Hall, only to be pushed back by police with pepper spray and tear gas.

Re-votes

Vucic maintains that the elections were fair, writes the AP news agency. But according to European observers the Serbian president has intervened in a “decisive” way. The campaign was “disturbed by harsh rhetoric, biased media, pressure on public sector workers and misuse of public resources.” Although the polls went smoothly in most cases, observers also saw some “serious irregularities” such as vote buying and multiple voting.

The Serbian electoral council decided last week that voters can cast their votes again this Saturday at thirty of the more than eight thousand polling stations. This would involve about 12,000 voters. Opposition parties are boycotting the revotes, they announced according to the AFP news agency, because in their view “they cannot undo the fraud.”

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2023-12-30 16:00:03
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