Serbia's Opposition Parties Plot Joint Election Strategy

Serbian opposition parties have held a joint meeting to plot a common strategy just two days after Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic announced that elections will be held in spring.

The Prime Minister said national polls would be held longside local and provincial elections in the northern province of Vojvodina but did not specify a date.

"Details about the joint plan will be worked out on the next meeting in coming days," the president of the opposition Democratic Party, Bojan Pajtic, said following the opposition parties' meeting in Belgrade.

"We have gathered to challenge Vucic's regime. A change of regime is our priority... Serbia has an undemocratic, authoritarian and violent government, which harms its people day after day," Pajtic said.

The core of the future coalition is made up of former Democratic Party officials who formed their own parties in past years.

Vucic's ruling Progressive Party ridiculed the move, saying that Serbian people had had the chance to experience the "honesty and capability of grand minds and numerous leaders" of Democratic Party in the past 16 years.

The date of the snap polls is not yet known, but Vucic said earlier on Tuesday that the elections might be held on April 24, along with local and provincial elections in Vojvodina.

A coalition led by the Progressive Party won 158 of 250 seats in parliament in the last election in March 2014 and formed a government with a coalition of parties led by the Socialist Party.

Democrats, who led the government before the Progressives came to power in 2012, won only 5.9 per cent of votes in 2014.

A survey conducted in October 2015 by Ipsos Strategic Marketing suggested that the Progressive Party would win 45.8 per cent of...