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Bërnabiq announces the victory of the Serbian Progressive Party/ The opposition does not declare

2023-12-17 22:15:17, Kosova & Bota CNA

Bërnabiq announces the victory of the Serbian Progressive Party/ The

The Serbian Prime Minister, Ana Bërnabi?, a member of the Serbian Progressive Party - of the current president, Aleksandar Vucic - has said that the first results in 50 percent of the polling stations show that the party has won 47.1 percent of the votes.

According to these forecasts, according to her, the opposition coalition "Serbia against violence" won 23 percent of the votes and the Socialist Party of Serbia, 6.7 percent of the votes.

"For Belgrade, they have started to achieve the first results", she said.

Brënabi? has rejected the statements of the media, the opposition and non-governmental organizations about irregularities in the elections, calling them "brutal lies".

Serbia held extraordinary parliamentary, local and provincial elections on Sunday.

About 6.5 million inhabitants had the right to vote.

The voting centers were open from 07:00 to 20:00, except when there were queues of voters waiting at the voting centers.

By 19:00, 55.5 percent of citizens have voted.

The Chairman of the Electoral Commission of Serbia, Vladimir Dimitrijevic, said that all the voting centers were opened on time - a total of 8,273.

First, the votes for the Parliament will be counted, then for the provinces and local ones.

Rasha Nedellkov, director of the non-governmental election observation organization CRTA, claimed that the organization's observers were physically attacked and their cars were severely damaged in the municipality of Ojaci in northern Serbia.

During the day, the police arrested a suspect in connection with this incident and it was said that investigations are being carried out.

Nedellkov added that there were voters who were transported by buses from the Serbian entity of Bosnia-Herzegovina to vote in Belgrade.

The Monitoring Mission for Democracy and Free Elections - established in Belgrade in 1997 - has reported that it has seen "repeated disregard" of election procedures in some polling centers and the presence of "propaganda material".

The American ambassador to Serbia, Christopher Hill, said that he visited several election centers in Belgrade.

"The American Embassy has 14 teams spread across Serbia and Belgrade", he said, as he commented on the presence of foreign observers in these elections.

Sunday's election was monitored by 5,587 domestic and foreign observers - a record number of observers, compared to the primary elections.

These are the fifth elections that have been organized in Serbia since 2012, and were held only 18 months after the organization of the last election process.

The election was prompted by growing public anger over this year's mass shootings and the opposition's continued demand for a new election process.

Two mass shootings in May that left 18 people dead, including nine schoolchildren and teenagers, have sparked weeks of street protests.

Opposition parties, and human rights observers, accuse the ruling party, the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), of the current president, Aleksandar Vu?i?, of limiting media freedom, supporting violence against opponents, of corruption, and of links to organized crime.

Vucic, and allies, reject these accusations.

Some public polls put Vucic's party as the winner of the elections, the coalition of opposition parties in second place, and the Socialist Party of former Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic, which is a coalition partner with SNS, in third.

The Serbian residents of Kosovo were seen as early as Sunday morning leaving for Serbia, to vote for the elections there.

In the morning hours, at the border points between Kosovo and Serbia - Merdare, Jarinje and Bërnjak - long lines have formed.

The Serbs have taken this route to exercise their right, since the election process has not been developed in Kosovo, compared to years ago.

They were able to vote in four cities in the south of Serbia - in Vranje, Kurshumli, Raskë and Tutin.

The Electoral Commission in Serbia has said that until 18:00, about 22,000 Serbian voters from Kosovo have voted, out of about 122,000 who were eligible.

The government of Kosovo has requested that the state of Serbia make a direct request to hold elections, but the official Belgrade has not done so, as it does not recognize the citizenship of Kosovo.

The last parliamentary elections, which Serbia has organized for the Serbian community in Kosovo, were those of June 21, 2020.

Those elections were held according to an earlier practice, where the mission in Kosovo of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) collected the votes. Those votes were then counted in Raska and Vranje, two border towns of Serbia.

The Deputy Prime Minister of Kosovo, Besnik Bislimi, has called on the Albanians in the Presheva Valley to vote in the parliamentary elections in Serbia, saying that "the Serbian project to silence the Albanian voice must be met with resistance and insubordination".

The Albanians of the Valley have competed this time with two lists.

In the previous parliamentary composition, Shaip Kamberi was the only representative of the Albanian community./ REL