Aleksandar Vučić finally conquered Serbia in the elections held on Sunday. He imposed his own rules of the game, overcame real or fake, whatever opposition and triumphantly won in all villages and towns (while this text is being written, votes are still being counted in Šabac), both in all zapećci and in Vračar. He won a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly. The story of a hooligan who became a radical who turned into a progressive who dreams of one country, one people and one Great Beloved Leader has reached its climax.
Until the publication of the final election results, the figures will still change in detail, but the SNS certainly won about 190 mandates, the Socialist Party of Serbia over 30, so that the current ruling coalition, which Vučić authoritarianly commands, has over 220 of the 250 mandates in the republican parliament. Apart from the minority parties, only the Serbian Patriotic Association of Aleksandar Šapić managed to get into the National Assembly, and SPAS would have been upset if the vote had not been lowered from 5 to 3 percent.
Vučić was right when he spoke of a "historic moment" in his first address to the nation after the publication of the preliminary results. On Sunday, the wheel of history was formally turned back in Serbia, the country practically returned to a one-party system, and since Vučić is the undisputed leader of the SNS who dominates the Parliament and determines the Government, the rule of one man, in other words autocracy or modern dictatorship, was confirmed.
In his victory speech, Aleksandar Vučić did not recognize any problem in the fact that the opposition is practically not represented in the Assembly, because Šapić said sooner rather than later that he is ready for any kind of cooperation. Once again, he showed that he has no basic sense of democracy, that he is guided by an inexplicable will for absolute power that will not stop there either. His announcement that he could include in the government people from electoral lists that did not even pass the 3 percent threshold is not an extension of his hand, but the statement of a man who cannot stand any pluralism.
The Free Citizens Movement and everyone else who got caught up in Vučić's circle got what they were looking for on Sunday, although it remains unclear what they were actually looking for.
There are still parties gathered around the Alliance for Serbia that called for a boycott of the elections at all levels. It will remain a matter of interpretation whether the boycott was successful or not, whether 4, 5 or 7 percent fewer Serbian citizens of legal age went to the polls compared to the turnout four years ago. Whether the turnout will be higher or lower than 50 percent in the end has a symbolic, psychological, but no practical meaning.
Because Vučić does not care about that, and it will not change the attitude of Brussels and Washington towards Serbia, which will certainly accept the future government as legitimate. First, because everyone who wanted to know what was happening in Serbia knew it even before these elections. Second, the West is preoccupied with its own problems, from a new economic pandemic crisis to troubling changes in traditional political systems; thirdly, and that he wants to do something for democracy in Serbia, the famous West does not even recognize anyone worth supporting in any opposition party.
No matter how the low turnout was interpreted - as a response to the call for a boycott, general disgust with the political offer, apathy or fear of the corona virus - SzS got what it wished for: The absolute power of one man has been wiped out. It's just that, just like before the election, it remained a secret the day after the election in which way the SzS leaders intend to dismantle that unmasked system of the Great Beloved Leader, the Essenes party machinery that can at any moment direct all state resources to the destruction of anyone who would could endanger her. If they continue to proclaim the low turnout as their own great victory and remain unaware of their place on the political stage, they will not only continue to hurtle towards their own complete ruin, but will also continue to drain hope from Serbia.
The battle on Sunday ended with the triumph of Aleksandr Vučić, and nothing can change there at the moment. The battle for Belgrade is coming in less than two years. In Belgrade, only about 35 percent of citizens went to the polls on Sunday, which is a drop of about 16 percent compared to the elections four years ago. This is where this current, or any other, opposition can look for its opportunity, if it draws the right conclusions from the weekly elections.
And these are: election conditions will not improve, they can only be worse; not a single opposition party or alliance individually has anything to claim against the dominant SNS, only a united opposition can change something; the campaign for the Belgrade elections must start today, not when the elections are announced.
