The largest opposition column sticks to the plan to occasionally organize "big protests" after Christmas, "Vreme" has learned. The first should be on January 13, although that has not yet been fully specified, sources from this list say.
Thus, the post-election struggle will continue, with smaller and larger protests at the end of the old year they did not bring any progress, just like hunger strike several opposition MPs.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić "abruptly" said that there would be no "Gonzales", referring to the international mission led by former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe González in 1997 who forced Slobodan Milošević to admit defeat in the local elections.
All in all, it did not come even a step closer to the goal publicly advocated by "Serbia against violence", which is the repetition of extraordinary elections at all levels because they were irregular.
The door is possibly open for a repeat of the Belgrade elections in which - at least that is Vučić's story for the cameras - no majority was produced.
In that situation, what will the opposition, which previously stopped the daily protests, aware that there is little benefit from it during the holidays?
From the West - mostly silence
Several "Vremena" sources from the "Serbia Against Violence" coalition are not too optimistic.
Some say that persuasion is ongoing with the initiators of ProGlas about the organization of the next protest. "No one is seriously working on the organization. It will come down to what we invite - so who shows up," says one opposition member.
Another notes that, apart from the initial objections of a few OSCE observers and a tweet from the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, no serious criticism of the conditions in which the vote was held in Serbia is coming from the West.
Some opposition politicians are reaching out to their contacts in Europe, but so far without success. The EU is officially waiting for the final report of the OSCE monitoring mission and is silent. "It's a shame if they shut up and let everything continue like this," said the source.
In the meantime, they are not giving up trying to resolve complaints about election theft before the competent institutions. We have already written about the fact that only the Constitutional Court is authorized to order a repeat of the election, if it finds that irregularities "significantly" affected the result.
But few believe in that institutional path. People from the opposition in the Republican and City Election Commission say that they have gathered plenty of evidence of voter list manipulation, but that it is "hypocritical" to expect that the entire extent of the fraud will be proven by tripping up the institutions.
Ever since the election night, part of the opposition claims that at least forty thousand "phantom voters" voted in Belgrade, people brought for the occasion from the interior and abroad.
Eternally unfinished elections?
In the end, the third source of "Vremena" from the strongest opposition list says that the idea of all these activities is that the next elections - repeated or regular local elections in the spring - will not be held under the same conditions.
"It is less important whether it will happen through institutions, with pressure from the street or from the international community," says this source. "It is most likely that a synergy of all three factors is required."
He says that the opposition actually has a majority in big cities, and the Progressives are trying to survive with "theft and manipulation". This, he predicts, will lead to constant instability.
"The bottom line," he continues, "is that, if it stays like this, we won't actually have a truly finished election, but a deeper and deeper crisis." The elections in Belgrade, for example, have not really ended since 2022. And Nis and Novi Sad are waiting for us."
