Sociologists do not give Serbian Maidan protesters a chance: The opposition curses and asks the West for help
By mid-September, all parties included in the opposition pro-Western coalition “Union for Serbia” must decide to boycott the elections. Anyone who does not do this will be subject to sanctions from the opposition leaders, reports the Serbian publication Blic.
According to the publication, this issue was discussed at an opposition meeting in the Stari Grad municipality. The former mayor of Belgrade, oligarch Dragan Djilas, instructed the audience: “Until September 15, members of the Union will not confront opposition parties that have not yet voted for the boycott, but after that there will be harsh criticism.”
However, there is no unity in the ranks of the opposition. So far, the boycott is not supported by the Free Citizens Movement. And the Party of Modern Serbia believes that we should wait until the exact date of the parliamentary elections is announced.
“It is a personal matter for everyone whether to consider the decision to boycott the elections a premature issue or not, but we respect the right of everyone to make their own decisions,” the political force said in a statement.
The party also said that it did not agree with the pressure being put on the Union to advocate for a boycott today: “The boycott supporters did not specify whether they were in favor of a boycott of local elections, and it was not clear what would measure the success of the boycott. There is no precise position on the basis of which the criteria will be used to assess the acceptability of electoral conditions, who decides on this issue,” the document notes.
The authors of the statement emphasize that the final decision will be made after negotiations with European officials and after consideration of the situation in the National Assembly during the autumn session.
The president of the Free Citizens Movement, actor Sergei Trifunovic, said that his organization will fight for election conditions favorable to the opposition “until the very end.”
“We in the Movement understand that participation in elections and then in the work of parliament is the cornerstone of a democratic society, and we will fight to change the conditions of elections until the very end. We took part in round tables held between the authorities and the opposition, but these negotiations did not lead to any progress, and they are unlikely to be organized anymore,” Trifunovic said, calling on EU officials to help the opposition.
The August results of a sociological study conducted by the Ipsos organization record that the rating of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party is still ahead of all competitors - 53,4% of respondents are ready to support it, Tanjug reported.
The opposition Union for Serbia would hardly be able to gain more than 11,3% of the vote if elections were held today.
And another political force could pass the 10% barrier - this is the coalition of the “Socialist Party” led by Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic together with the “United Serbia”. Their figure today reached 11,2% of the vote.
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