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Belgrade / AFP
Ultra-nationalists hope to dent the success of Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic as Serbia votes on Sunday, calling on the Balkan country to embrace big brother Russia instead of the European Union.
While pro-European Vucic is widely expected to retain power, pro-Russian forces are set to make a comeback in parliament after several years in the cold, buoyed by the recent war crimes acquittal of their leading figure.
Vojislav Seselj, who heads the Radical Party, was found not guilty last month of all charges arising from the 1990s Balkan conflicts in a shock ruling from UN judges at The Hague.
His Radicals failed to win seats in the last two elections, but the firebrand former deputy premier is expected to lead them back into parliament after a virulently anti-Western campaign. “We do not want to be in the European Union. All Serbia’s traditional enemies are there!” Seselj proclaimed last month at a Belgrade rally, also lashing out at NATO for bombing the country during the 1998-1999 Kosovo war—still a sore point for many Serbs.
Seselj, 61, has publicly burned EU and NATO flags and claims deeper ties with Russia would overcome “economic misery” in Serbia, one of Europe’s poorest countries, where the unemployment rate stands at about 20 percent.
The Radicals and other pro-Russian groups are together expected to win around 10 to 15 percent of the vote, while Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party is polling at roughly 50 percent.
Second, but trailing behind, are his Socialist coalition partners, while splintered centrist and left-leaning opposition groups are predicted to scrape the five percent threshold.
Once a staunch ultra-nationalist ally of Seselj, the 46-year-old premier has transformed himself into an ostensibly reformist friend of the West who hopes to lead his country of seven million people into the EU.