Elections Return to Balkan Agenda as Pandemic Wanes

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, then presidential candidate, greets a supporter during a campaign rally in Nis in 2017. Photo: EPA/Djordje Savic

Serbia's election race will restart where it stopped:

Without the introduction of a state of emergency in mid-March, Serbia would have already held regular elections on April 26, and would now be preoccupied by talks for the formation of the new government.

The State Electoral Commission has since frozen all its activities, which means matters can simply resume from where they stopped, as soon as the state of emergency is over.

"This means that there will be no re-announcement of elections, as we are formally/legally talking about the same election cycle," a political analyst, Bojan Klacar, from the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy, told BIRN.

On Sunday, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, also leader of the populist Serbian Progressive Party, announced that the state of emergency will be lifted on May 6 and that the elections will be held on June 21.

Earlier elections would favour Vucic and the Progressives, who were the favourites by far to win the race before the crisis erupted.

Vucic's party was practically the only real contender after the opposition parties in the Alliance for Serbia decided to boycott the polls, accusing Vucic of authoritarianism and of planning to rig the result.

The boycott followed a year of street protests against the government, and after several failed attempts of NGOs and the EU to mediate a dialogue between the two sides.

"A faster election suits the ruling party more because they were the only ones visible during the state of emergency and can more easily organise election activities, while … the...