It seems that almost all the parties that entered parliament, regardless of the number of seats they won, have reason to believe that they lost a lot. SNS won one-party parliament, SPS [Socialists] lost part of their votes, and Aleksandar Šapić (perhaps) the municipality he cared about the most
First and foremost, it’s important to consider the turnout in these elections. Even now, a few days after the elections, we have no official information on how many people went to the polls, and the CRTA observation mission announced that all elections held had the most irregularities since they began observing them, and that they were predominantly aimed at raising turnout (drawing people out to vote). It should not be overlooked that these elections had the lowest turnout in Serbian parliamentarianism and that, compared to the previous elections, about 486,000 fewer people voted, while there were over 120,000 invalid ballots.
The election results themselves shouldn’t surprise anyone. We might have expected slightly higher voter numbers for PSG (social liberals) and SRS (Radicals), but no public opinion poll indicated that one or the other had certainly crossed the three per cent threshold, and particularly since SNS managed to “draw out” over two million voters to the elections, meaning that the threshold reached almost 100,000 votes. Even despite this result, SNS cannot be satisfied with the final results, because the boycott resulted in the current administration winning 234 of 250 seats, and SNS itself taking close to 4/5 seats despite the institutional changes (lowering the threshold and easing candidacies in the elections), with the aim of throwing a few more options into to parliament.
This kind of image of the parliament and local government will only further position Serbia as an undemocratic regime in which party and election competition is non-existent.
The government is the only one, along with the minority parties, to win seats according to the five per cent threshold that’s been in force for 28 years, since the introduction of the proportional electoral system. In that sense, SNS cannot be satisfied because it won almost a one-party parliament and virtually no opposition exists in it, which they tried in multiple ways to avoid.
SPS lost about 70,000 votes, so they can’t be satisfied either. Likewise, although he entered the parliament, it seems that Aleksandar Šapić will lose the municipality of New Belgrade, despite the largest number of mandates, and thus lose executive power, at least in this city municipality, which I believe was actually his primary goal. The opposition parties that went to the polls was completely annihilated, with the possible exception of POKS (conservative royalists), which only slightly fell below the threshold. Milan Stamatović preserved the municipality of Čajetina and it seems he’ll pass the 1% limit, which means he won’t have to return campaign funds from the budget, and can almost be the only one to declare himself a winner in these elections. As things stand, the opposition-led Šabac has been lost, as has the municipality of Paraćin – which appeared to be one of the key missions of the SNS machinery. There were only a few municipalities where SNS didn’t win an absolute majority.
