Serbia’s Progressive Party, led by President Alexandar Vučić, won early elections in Serbia on Sunday and will likely have an absolute majority in the country’s parliament.
Early parliamentary and municipal elections were held in Serbia on Sunday — the third in three years in the country of 6.5 million people. The elections were called by Vučić, an ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, after social pressure following the school massacres in May forced the Serbian president to take political action.
Vučić has often called early elections in the past 10 years, and the partial results show that he has again played his tactics well. With 85.5 percent of the votes processed, according to parallel counts by CeSID and Ipsos, the party alliance behind the Serbian president, “Serbia cannot stop,” won 46.2 percent of the votes, thereby commanding 130 seats in Serbia’s 250-seat parliament. The leading force in the party alliance is the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which was led by Vučić until May this year.
“This is an absolute victory, which makes me extremely happy,” a jubilant Vučić said at his party’s headquarters in Belgrade. “We know what we have achieved in the previous period and how tough a period lies ahead.”
They were opposed by a broader opposition coalition than ever before, together with the mass movement that emerged after the school massacres, but the list called “Serbia against violence” only managed to get 23.6 percent of the vote, according to Ipsos.
Other candidates for the Serbian parliament are the Socialist Party of Serbia, an ally of Vučić, with 6.6 percent, the conservative-monarchist NADA coalition scored 4.9 percent, and the far-right We – the Voice of the People secured 4.8 percent.
VMSZ, the largest political party of ethnic Hungarians in Serbia, which has been part of the ruling coalition since 2012, has managed to hold on to its five seats in parliament and expects to have a deputy minister position in the new government.
