The election victories of opposition parties in the region’s capital cities suggest that the path to political change at the top of the country could lead through the largest urban centres, but that isn’t “contagious” and tells us nothing about possible outcomes for local Belgrade elections. These political changes don’t seem to be pro-democratic and left-leaning, either globally or locally, but we can never rule out a miracle.
Serbia’s opposition circles watched with great enthusiasm as the results of local elections in Croatia brought victory to new, left-wing forces in Zagreb and Split, and with hope that something similar could happen in Belgrade. A similar debate accompanied election results in Montenegro and North Macedonia. Some people are also drawing parallels between events in Serbia and Hungary, where speculation is rife that the opposition could win more seats in parliament after many years of Viktor Orban’s inviolable rule, with Budapest having become an opposition stronghold. We asked our interlocutors whether there are politically “merged courts” in the region and whether these examples tell us anything about possible changes on the Serbian political scene.