Serbia’s third election in three and a half years, called by a ruling party adept at taking advantage of state resources and media bias, is the latest to attract controversy. Concern centres on voting for control of the capital, Belgrade, with credible evidence that non-residents were registered and bussed in on election day to skew the vote. The allegations triggered anti-government protests, which the populist ruling party characterised as foreign-inspired attempts to undermine Serbia. The government restricts civic space while facing little international pressure, since it balances between the European Union and Russia. It should be encouraged to recognise civil society as a key guarantor of a healthy democracy.

Serbia’s December 2023 elections saw the ruling party retain power – but amid a great deal of controversy.

Civil society has cried foul about irregularities in the parliamentary election, but particularly the municipal election in the capital, Belgrade. In recent times the city has been a hotbed of anti-government protests, which have sometimes encountered violent repression. That’s one of the reasons it’s suspicious that the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) held its first place in the city election, taking 49 of the City Assembly’s 110 seats, one up on its total at the last election in 2022.

Allegations are that the SNS achieved this by having ruling party supporters from outside Belgrade temporarily register as city residents so they could cast votes. On election day, civil society observers documented large-scale movements of people into Belgrade, from regions where municipal elections weren’t being held and from across the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. The opposition has alleged that around 40,000 people were brought to Belgrade to vote. All in all, civil society documented irregularities at 14 per cent of Belgrade voting stations. Many in civil society believe this made the crucial difference in stopping the opposition winning.

The main opposition coalition, Serbia Against Violence (SPN), which made gains but finished second in a vote that left no overall majority, has rejected the results. It’s calling for them to be annulled and a rerun with proper safeguards to prevent any repeat of irregularities.

It isn’t only the SPN complaining. Thousands have taken to the streets of Belgrade to protest about electoral manipulation, rejecting the violation of the most basic principle of democracy – that people have the right to be governed by the representatives they have elected.

Voices from the frontline

Raša Nedeljkov is Programme Director of the Centre for Research, Transparency and Accountability, the Serbian civil society organisation that collected evidence of voting irregularities.

 

The most critical concerns revolve around the municipal elections in Belgrade. The announced results didn’t reflect the freely expressed will of the city’s voters. Our findings revealed that electoral engineering, particularly through organised voter migration, crucially influenced the outcome of the closely contested race for the Belgrade City Assembly.

Organised voter migration is neither legal nor legitimate. Falsely registering residence for the purpose of voting in local elections outside one’s jurisdiction violates the law, undermines democratic representation and violates citizens’ right to local self-government.

Local elections were strategically staggered and held in only a third of the local jurisdictions to enable temporary voter migration and secure the victory of the SNS in Belgrade. As a result, Belgrade is now on the verge of being governed by people largely elected by non-residents who won’t bear the consequences of the decisions they make.

The SNS also gained significant unfair advantage in the parliamentary elections thanks to intensified political pressure on voters, misuse of public resources and institutions, and control of the most influential media. The national election wasn’t nearly fair, but this was overshadowed by the massive manipulation used to prevent political change in Serbia’s largest city.

Tens of thousands took to the streets shortly after the results were announced. Protests were sparked by the issues we’ve denounced. Protesters are angry about electoral engineering involving illegal manipulation of the voter register and organised voter migration. They urge the state to protect the integrity of elections by prosecuting those involved in illegal manipulation.

Protesters are not necessarily supporters of opposition parties but rather citizens concerned that a critical tool to hold political elites accountable and drive change is being taken away from them. Their core demand is that fresh elections be held at all levels, contingent upon significant revisions to electoral conditions.

We urge the international community to look beyond immediate geopolitical considerations and consider the consequences that could follow if democracy in Serbia continues to erode. Further democratic backsliding would only bring it closer to the non-democratic part of the world.

Serbian civil society is actively proposing solutions for the challenges of a captured state and diminishing democratic standards, and our international allies should give more serious considerations to these recommendations. The international community must act soon to prevent Serbia becoming an outright dictatorship.

 

This is an edited extract of our conversation with Raša. Read the full interview here.

A history of violations

The SNS has held power since 2012. It blends economic neoliberalism with social conservatism and populism, and has presided over declining respect for civic space and media freedoms. In recent years, Serbian environmental activists have been subjected to physical attacks. President Aleksandar Vučić attempted to ban the 2022 EuroPride LGBTQI+ rights march. Journalists have faced public vilification, intimidation and harassment. Far-right nationalist and anti-rights groups have flourished and also target LGBTQI+ people, civil society and journalists.

The SNS has a history of electoral irregularities. The December 2023 vote was a snap election, called just over a year and a half since the previous vote in April 2022, which re-elected Vučić as president but saw his party lose its parliamentary majority, forcing it to piece together a governing coalition. In contrast, in the previous parliamentary election, held in 2020, the SNS won a huge majority because the major opposition coalition boycotted the vote, believing it wouldn’t be free or fair.

In 2022, international observers raised concerns, with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), a regional intergovernmental body, pointing to an ‘uneven playing field’ characterised by close ties between major media outlets and the government, misuse of public resources, irregularities in campaign financing and pressure on public sector staff to support the SNS.

These same problems were seen in the December 2023 parliamentary election, in which the SNS maintained its majority. Again, the OSCE concluded there’d been systemic SNS advantages. Civil society observers found evidence of vote buying, political pressure on voters, breaches of voting security and pressure on election observers. During the campaign, civil society groups were vilified, opposition officials were subjected to physical and verbal attacks and opposition rallies were prevented.

But the ruling party has denied everything, insisting that these were Serbia’s cleanest-ever elections. It’s also reacted by arresting protesters and slurring civil society for calling out irregularities, accusing activists of trying to destabilise Serbia.

Backdrop of protests

The latest vote, the third parliamentary election in just three and a half years, was called following months of protests against the government. These were sparked by anger at two mass shootings in two days in May 2023, the first in a Belgrade school, with 17 people killed.

The shootings focused public attention on the high number of weapons still in circulation after the wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991 and the growing normalisation of violence, including by the government and its supporters.

Protesters accused state media of promoting violence and called for leadership changes. They also demanded political resignations, including of education minister Branko Ružić, who disgracefully tried to blame the killings on ‘western values’ and was quickly forced to quit. There were many other examples of how the ruling party reacts to anything it sees as a threat. Prime Minister Ana Brnabić blamed foreign intelligence services for fuelling protests. State media poured abuse on protesters and the government organised a counter-protest, pressuring public sector workers to attend.

The SPN opposition coalition came together in this context. Seeking to channel anti-government anger, it named itself after the ‘Serbia Against Violence’ protest slogan.

These might have seemed odd circumstances for the ruling party to call elections. But election campaigns have historically played to Vučić’s strengths as a campaigner and give him some powerful levers, with normal government activities put on hold and the machinery of the state and associated media at his disposal.

In a context of fragmentation, the SNS didn’t need to appeal to the electorate as a whole but only to its support base, something it did by painting Serbia as an economic miracle that an opposition win could only harm. The SNS also tried to mobilise supporters on the touchstone issue of Kosovo, the breakaway nation that declared independence in 2008 but the Serbian government insists remains part of the country: tensions between the two threatened to boil over in 2023.

Only this time it seems the SNS didn’t think all its advantages would be quite enough and, in Belgrade at least, upped its electoral manipulation to the point where it became hard to ignore.

East and west

There’s little pressure from Serbia’s international partners to both east and west. Its far-right and socially conservative forces are staunchly pro-Russia, drawing on ideas of a greater Slavic identity. Russian connections run deep. In the last census, 85 per cent of people identified themselves as affiliated with the Serbian Orthodox Church, strongly in the sway of its Russian counterpart, in turn closely integrated with Russia’s repressive machinery.

The Serbian government has relied on Russian support to prevent international recognition of Kosovo. Russian officials were only too happy to characterise post-election protests as western attempts to provoke unrest, while Prime Minister Brnabić thanked Russian intelligence services for providing information on planned opposition activities.

But states that sit between the European Union (EU) and Russia are being lured on both sides. Serbia is also a candidate to join the EU, having completed 22 out of the 35 chapters of negotiations needed to join. The EU wants to keep it onside and stop it drifting closer to Russia, so there’s been little criticism from EU states.

Serbia keeps performing its balancing act, gravitating towards Russia while doing just enough to keep in with the EU. In the 2022 United Nations resolution on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it voted to condemn Russia’s aggression and suspend it from the Human Rights Council. But it’s resisted calls to impose sanctions on Russia and in 2022 signed a deal with Russia to consult each other on foreign policy issues.

The European Parliament is at least prepared to voice concerns. In a recent debate, many of its members pointed to the irregularities and its observation mission noted problems including media bias, phantom voters and the vilification of election observers.

Other EU institutions should acknowledge what happened in Belgrade. They should raise concerns about electoral manipulation and defend democracy in Serbia. To do so, they need to support and work with civil society, promote its autonomy and protect it from attacks. An independent and enabled civil society will bring much-needed scrutiny and accountability. This must be non-negotiable for the EU.

OUR CALLS FOR ACTION

  • The Serbian government must cease vilifying civil society and independent journalists and commit to enabling them to play their proper role in holding the government to account.
  • The European Union must commit to raising issues of electoral irregularities and obstructed civic space in its negotiations with the Serbian government.
  • Serbian civil society should work collectively to document violations and bring them to the attention of European institutions.

Cover photo by Vladimir Zivojinovic/Getty Images