Summary of the day
Aleksandar Vučić’s ruling SNS party won Serbia’s snap parliamentary election.
Preliminary results put SNS on 46%, while the opposition coalition Serbia Against Violence took 23%.
There were reports of irregularities. An international observation mission said the election took place in “unjust conditions”. It noted that “instances of serious irregularities, including vote-buying and ballot box stuffing, were observed.”
Opposition politicians raised serious concerns about irregularities in Belgrade, where Vučić’s critics were hoping to do well in local elections.
Vladimir Obradović, the opposition coalition’s candidate for Belgrade mayor, said that “the campaign was unfair in all aspects from the beginning till the election day”. He said the results in Belgrade “do not represent the free will of the Belgrade citizens” and he demanded new elections.
An opposition protest is expected in Belgrade this evening.
The European Council president, Charles Michel, called a special leaders’ summit for 1 February.
The Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, visited the Hungarian leadership in Budapest.
Updated
Belgrade election must be repeated, mayoral candidate says
Vladimir Obradović, the opposition coalition Serbia Against Violence’s candidate for Belgrade mayor, said today that “the campaign was unfair in all aspects from the beginning till the election day”.
“Pressure on voters, buying votes, voters from other areas and even countries are only some of the irregularities that were observed and reported by independent monitoring missions,” he told the Guardian in an email.
He added:
Results of the elections in Belgrade do not represent the free will of the Belgrade citizens, and we cannot accept them. We demand new elections with fair conditions for all parties involved.
Updated
