There are no issues on which “elections are won or lost” here. If they existed, that would mean that our democracy is in a much healthier state than it actually is, and that the election race unfolds under fair conditions, on a free “market of ideas”
According to the findings of the latest public opinion survey conducted by CRTA, citizens are most concerned over economic problems – 40 per cent of respondents say that they have been impacted by inflation, i.e., by price hikes and falling living standards. More recent elections haven’t given us the opportunity to see serious, well-argued confrontations between contrasting economic and development policies.
The government has tended to assuage voter “anxiety” with various ad hoc solutions and concessions during the pre-election period, which either border on, or even cross the line in, the practice of buying votes, and certainly occupy the zone of the misuse of public resources and the further erasing of the boundary between the state and the party.
The opposition could benefit from the fact that citizens single out ubiquitous violence as the number two problem in society, followed by corruption and the conceitedness of the government. The coalition named “Serbia against violence”, which was actually created on the wave of major citizen protests, could probably build a good part of its campaign on the struggle against violence, corruption and autocracy.
Not only is there huge inequality in the representing of election participants in the media, which ensures a good part of the citizenry is unable to even find out what policies the opposition is actually advocating, but also too many voters are exposed to political pressure
Unfortunately, I don’t think there are issues on which “elections are won or lost” here. If they existed, that would mean that our democracy is in a much healthier state than it actually is, and that the election race unfolds under fair conditions, on a free “market of ideas”. And we are a long way from that.
Not only is there huge inequality in the representing of election participants in the media, which ensures a good part of the citizenry is unable to even find out what policies the opposition is actually advocating, but also too many voters are exposed to political pressure, or find themselves “enslaved” in the network of clientelism in which they trade votes in exchange for their basic existential needs.
CRTA recently published the results of research on the ways relations of clientelism function in the system of social work centres. Approximately half a million Serbian citizens live in abject poverty and many of them are bribed into voting in accordance with directives if they want to exercise their right to the assistance that’s guaranteed to them by law.
The question for the opposition is how they can motivate as many as possible of those who aren’t exposed to direct political pressure to vote, or rather to believe that change is possible and act accordingly.
