BELGRADE, April 24, (APP/AFP): Serbians vote in a general election Sunday with likely victor Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic calling on them to abandon the country’s “dark” past and embrace a future in the European Union.
While Vucic’s nominally conservative Serbian Progressive Party is projected to win about half of the votes, ultra-nationalists are also expected to return to parliament and want the Balkan country to deepen its alliance with Russia instead of Europe.
“These are elections for the future of Serbia. We will not allow a return to the dark times which we believed were long gone,” Vucic told the crowd at his final rally in Belgrade.
Choosing the past would make Serbia “a European leper again”, he told a local television station on Thursday, in a reference to Serbia’s isolated
status during the 1990s regime of strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
Vucic, once a close ally of Milosevic, has remodelled himself as a
pro-European reformist who hopes to lead Serbia, home to seven million people, into the EU.
The 46-year-old called the early election — Serbia’s third in four years — saying he needed a clear mandate to press ahead with the reforms needed to join the 28-member bloc.
But critics see the vote as an attempt to consolidate his power, expressing concerns about his authoritarian tendencies including curbs on media freedom.
The country opened the first formal stages in accession negotiations in December, although the EU has said there will be no further enlargement until 2020.
Voting opens on Sunday at 7.00 am (0500 GMT) and closes at 8.00 pm, with the first results expected before midnight.