Serbia’s Decisive Moment: Time to Act
Despite appearances, there is a whiff of change in the Serbian air. Democrats and outsiders must unify to exploit the moment.
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Serbia’s political landscape reached a junction in the aftermath of December’s elections when President Aleksandar Vučić’s electoral alliance once again extended his decade-long dominance of the political scene.
Opposition forces cried foul over the alleged vote rigging, and in December these resulted in mass street protests involving some violence and arrests.
But this was much more than simply the repeat of a familiar tale. There is very significant opposition to the government and discontent cannot be erased by Vučić and his lieutenants repeatedly using election campaigns as a tactic to disorientate and disable the opposition.
As the organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) monitoring mission put it: “Serbia has conducted its third parliamentary election in just under four years, a frequency that has diminished the public’s trust in the democratic process and the institutions governing it.”
It’s done more than that. In the last 10 years, Serbia has had five parliamentary elections, even though each parliamentary term can stretch to four years. Despite this, a stable parliamentary majority has proved elusive.
The reasons behind this seemingly endless parade of elections are complex but mainly stem from a wish to disable political pluralism by creating constant pressure on opposition voices and denying the time for various democratic structures to build and evolve. The international civic society alliance, Civicus, describes the government as “allergic to pluralism.”
The last decade has seen Serbia without a fully operational government for half that period; it was run in the interim by technocratic administrations designed to manage but with little-to-no policymaking role. This was exploited to delay and disrupt pressure from the international community to foster the rule of law, to decide on foreign policy, and to engage in dialog with Kosovo among other things.
The 2023 vote was more noteworthy in being called very early indeed; the previous vote was only held in 2022.
Why? The intervening period was marred by the Banjska incident in September when heavily armed Serbian gunmen suddenly appeared in a village in Kosovo. This resulted in the killing of a Kosovan policeman, which led to a day of fighting between the Kosovo security forces and around 30 gunmen holed up in a monastery. Four more men were killed during the exchanges.
While Vucic denied responsibility for this event, he did not deny his links with the leader of the armed group and indeed vigorously defended him. The individual, Zvonko Veselinovic, who is sanctioned by the US for leading an organized crime group, claimed responsibility and was briefly arrested. The rising tensions alarmed NATO member states and around 300 troops were sent as reinforcements to Kosovo from Britain and Romania to join the KFOR peacekeeping force.
These events have seriously undermined the international community’s seeming determination to view the Serbian president as a stabilizing factor in the region.
It is surely not coincidental that just a couple of days after the fighting, Vučić called the elections for December, likely as a means to ease the pressure. The day after, the mayors of some municipalities resigned, enabling the elections on a local level to match the earliest possible date of parliamentary elections. A number did not bother to hide that they acted on the orders of the president. By pitching Serbia back into limbo, Vučić eased the pressures from the international community — who could they complain to? — and magicked away the problem.
But in solving one problem, Vučić created another. The timing was far from ideal. Two mass shootings in May, one in a primary school, were fresh in the minds of voters. These brought lengthy and massive protests in Belgrade, amid questions about a culture of violence in a country awash with small arms since the wars of Yugoslav succession in the 1990s.
So the government had to use all its considerable powers (the country is judged “partly free” by Freedom House) to dampen support for the opposition. The president rushed to raise pressure on voters, using his extensive media control, public resources, and — as during the last elections — relocating voters to bump up ruling party results. This was the most noticed and mentioned method used to alter results, an approach that is illegitimate without being illegal, much like gerrymandering.
But it worked? Up to a point. Vučić’s approach was too rushed and ham-fisted to escape detection by a hitherto broadly supportive West. With the gunsmoke from Banjska still lingering in the air, international observers were much more vocal about election irregularities and the overt bias toward the ruling party.
The observers also concluded that the visibility of the president during the campaign (in public appearances, on ballots, etc.) distorted informed voting. For the first time, they clearly articulated reports that empowered democratic forces in the country and made them feel that the international community acknowledged their struggle.
“The low level of political debate, the pressure on voters, the emphasis on personally discrediting opponents, the harsh rhetoric used during the campaign and, in general, the political life of Serbia, are all very worrying elements,” the head of the European Parliament’s observer team stated.
All of this means that while the government was re-elected, with 48% of the vote, there was nonetheless a rise for the centrist coalition Serbia Against Violence (SNS), which won an additional 25 seats in the 250-member parliament. In Belgrade, the capital, the opposition won more votes than the governing parties.
More broadly, the political dynamics have altered. That means there is a potential for political change, but it needs to be used by a dispersed group of actors.
To begin with, three things must happen.
First, domestic political (not just partisan) pressure needs to continue through protests, popular disobedience, strikes, and so on. There are strong democratic voices on the ground, but they need to be organized, managed and channeled.
Second, domestic legal instruments need to be used to either prove they are controlled and not functioning, or hopefully to encourage some disobedient voices within these structures. The second would shake the system of full control and give at least some outlines of separation of power, which we lost a decade ago.
Third, democratic Serbia needs the support of a strong and united West. International allies with a deep belief in democracy should act to aid democratic development. Stability without full freedom is not good enough for Serbia. It’s as wrong as relying on a strong leader. The work of democracy is to strengthen institutions, not rulers.
Authoritarian rule thrives where democrats fail to support values-based action, rapid organization, and a common vision. If the potential for democratic change is not used in Serbia right now, it would just prove that we, as democratic forces, both domestically and internationally, are not mature enough to achieve this fundamental goal.
The ball is in our court. It’s time to act.
Maja Stojanovic is the Executive Director of Civic Initiatives, an organization supporting activists and fighting to enable civic participation in Serbia. She is also a board member of the Balkan Civil Society Development Network and has over 23 years experience in the human rights field. She was previously the President of the Board of Directors of Human Rights House Belgrade for nine years.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.
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