Serbia voter turnout highest in decades as students oppose longtime leader

Election committee says turnout reaches 65% amid allegations of intimidation, unit and voting irregularities.

Polls person closed successful Serbia’s snap parliamentary election, which saw the highest elector turnout successful decades, with a student-backed question seeking to unseat longtime person Aleksandar Vucic.

Voting ended astatine 8pm section clip (19:00 GMT) connected Sunday, with archetypal indications of the effect expected a fewer hours later.

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The ballot volition find whether Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which has governed since 2012, tin clasp powerfulness against a question calved from nationwide anticorruption protests.

The State Election Commission said that elector turnout had reached 64.9 percent by 17:00GMT, ⁠⁠the ⁠⁠highest since ⁠⁠the breakup ‌‌of Yugoslavia successful ‌‌1992.

The higher turnout does not amusement which broadside gained support.

University of Belgrade researcher Jelena Vasiljevic told Al Jazeera successful an interrogation published connected Friday that the SNS had a reliable elector base, portion the students needed to pull radical who usually did not vote.

Sunday’s voting was besides marked by reports of intimidation and procedural problems.

The Centre for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA), an autarkic predetermination watchdog, said its observers recorded unit connected voters oregon predetermination workers astatine astir a 3rd of the 500 polling stations it monitored.

It besides reported failures to support ballot secrecy.

By 5pm (16:00 GMT), the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy (CeSID), an election-monitoring group, had received astir 260 reports of imaginable irregularities, including ballot photography, radical voting and difficulties with recognition checks.

Pressure from student-led movement

In Belgrade, constabulary wearing riot helmets and carrying shields deployed adjacent the predetermination commission’s headquarters, wherever roads were closed and barricades erected.

City prosecutors appealed connected Sunday for everyone progressive successful the predetermination to debar violence.

The predetermination follows astir 2 years of student-led protests that began aft a railway presumption canopy collapsed successful Novi Sad successful November 2024, sidesplitting 16 people.

Demands for accountability widened into a question against alleged authorities corruption and repression. Vucic and the SNS contradict those accusations.

The Student List – Students Win, which emerged from demonstrations, is fielding candidates drawn from professions, including medicine and education, galore of whom person nary governmental experience.

The question campaigns for stronger institutions and an extremity to corruption.

Some established absorption parties person backed the students alternatively than tract candidates of their own.

Vucic resigned arsenic president successful September to tally for premier minister, promising higher pensions, public-sector wages and investment.

Supporters recognition his regularisation with modernising Serbia’s economy.

About six and a fractional cardinal radical were eligible to ballot for 250 parliamentary seats, with 18 electoral lists competing. A bulk of 126 seats is needed to signifier a government.