Vucic and Serbia’s ruling SNS party on track for election victory

Serbia’s president Aleksandar Vucic was on monitor for re-election on Sunday. His SNS social gathering additionally appeared to have taken the most important portion of the votes, a efficiency more likely to enable the populist conservative chief to consolidate his energy in a second time period.

Pollsters Ipsos and CESID predicted that Vucic would garner practically 60 per cent of the votes amid a comparatively excessive turnout, with the official outcome anticipated within the coming days. If confirmed, Vucic would keep away from a runoff for a second election operating.

“An enormous thanks to the residents of Serbia,” he mentioned. “I’m endlessly proud and endlessly blissful . . . I imagine in a major and convincing victory and I imagine everybody will get what they deserve.”

Vucic, a former ultranationalist who rose to prominence as propaganda minister beneath former Serbian chief Slobodan Milosevic, has campaigned on a message of stability amid the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Serbia’s conventional ally.

He has come beneath robust worldwide strain over his resistance to becoming a member of sanctions in opposition to Russia — one of many few European leaders to take such a stance.

Vucic is unlikely to alter course dramatically given a major proportion of his voters sympathise with Russian president Vladimir Putin’s marketing campaign in opposition to Kyiv, and resent the west, which bombed Belgrade in the course of the Yugoslav wars in 1999.

“Relating to Russia sanctions, a fast about-turn appears unlikely,” mentioned Milos Damjanovic, an analyst on the BIRN consultancy in Belgrade. “Vucic will search to play for time and keep away from aligning with sanctions on Russia for so long as potential, hoping that the warfare in Ukraine ends or grinds to a halt.”

How far Vucic can take that coverage can even depend upon whether or not the EU and the US tolerate Belgrade’s non-alignment on sanctions, Damjanovic mentioned, including that western strain would run up in opposition to Serbian public opinion and the nation’s dependence on Russian power.

Russian firms personal the vast majority of Serbia’s power sector, its largest gasoline storage facility, and management the nation’s provide of gasoline by way of the brand new Turkish Stream pipeline. Serbia’s long-term gasoline provide settlement should be renegotiated by July.

Vucic can even profit from the victory of his shut ally, Hungarian premier Viktor Orban, who additionally received re-election on Sunday.

“Vucic will definitely be happy with Orban’s victory, provided that the Hungarian chief has been a powerful backer of Vucic and Serbia throughout the EU,” Damjanovic mentioned.

Earlier than the Ukraine warfare outmoded different points, Serbians had protested in opposition to Vucic in a ballooning collection of protests over insufficient environmental protections and a perceived leniency in direction of multinational firms, forcing Vucic into an about-face on one of many nation’s largest funding tasks, a lithium mine.