Serbia reruns local elections in capital

BELGRADE

Serbia's capital Belgrade on Sunday held a fresh round of voting in local elections, nearly six months after alleged irregularities and accusations of fraud marred an earlier poll.

The polls opened at 7 a.m. in the capital with voters having the opportunity to cast ballots until 8pm.

President Aleksandar Vucic's ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) is heading into the elections with momentum on its side, amid infighting in the opposition camp in recent months.

The coalition of opposition parties and candidates that campaigned under the "Serbia Against Violence" banner during elections in December proved a tough competitor to the SNS and its allies in the capital.

Belgrade remained an outlier in the polls, which saw the SNS and its coalition partners win a commanding victory during parliamentary elections held on the same day.

The opposition won 43 out of the 110 seats in the Belgrade municipal council compared to the 49 secured by the SNS.

But after weeks of negotiating, the SNS was unable to form a municipal government and new elections were announced in March.

Local elections were also taking place on Sunday in dozens of other municipalities around the country.

Following December's elections, international observers lambasted the vote over a string of "irregularities", including "vote buying" and "ballot box stuffing", after the opposition accused the ruling party of committing fraud.

The controversy fuelled rallies in front of government offices during a series of protests that rattled the capital for weeks.

Serbia's top court later rejected an opposition move to have the vote annulled.

The opposition, however, has struggled to remain united, with fights over the name of the coalition and possible boycotts sowing divisions.

'National survival'

Ahead of the vote, Vucic has turned to an ultra-nationalist message to rally his base, already incensed by last month's vote at the UN General Assembly to establish an annual day of remembrance for the 1995 Srebrenica genocide.

The president attended the vote in New York, where draped in a Serbia flag he blasted the resolution, saying it would "open old wounds" and "create complete political havoc".

"The main narrative of the campaign, promoted even before the elections were announced, frames the Belgrade elections as a matter of national survival and future," the Belgrade-based Centre for Research, Transparency and Accountability said in a report.

To combat potential fraud, legislation supported by the opposition was passed in May, prohibiting anyone who has moved in the last year from voting in their new constituency.

The new law follows allegations made in December that Serbs from neighbouring Bosnia were bussed into Belgrade to cast ballots illegally.

The Serbia Against Violence movement was formed in the wake of back-to-back mass shootings in the country last year, which spurred hundreds of thousands to take to the streets in demonstrations that morphed into anti-government protests over several months.

Vucic has repeatedly dismissed his critics and the protests as a foreign plot, warning that Serbia would be directionless without his leadership.