Unpopular Serbian opposition leader calls for boycott of elections
One of the founders of the pro-Western non-systemic “Union for Serbia” and head of the People’s Party, Vuk Jeremic, said that Serbian citizens need to ignore local and parliamentary elections in order to “preserve their health and dignity.”
The politician stated this to the Danas publication, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
In an interview, Vuk Jeremic said there are two reasons why Serbian citizens should stay home on June 21, when the country will hold parliamentary and local elections simultaneously.
“Firstly, this is health, and there is still a danger of infection,” the oppositionist fears. “The situation when the state virtually overnight announces that no restrictions are needed is inconsistent with common sense. The elections called for June 21 will be the first in Europe since the start of the pandemic. Secondly, everyone knows the election results in advance and cannot be changed by anyone’s vote.”
According to Jeremic, his party decided to boycott the elections back in August last year and is not going to change its decision.
The same can't be said for his former comrades in the Alliance for Serbia: first, the youth protest movement "One of Five Million" announced its intention to abandon the boycott and run in the elections, amid scandal . Then, the leader of the Together for Serbia party, Šabac Mayor Nebojša Zelenović, lost his nerve and decided to participate only in the local elections. Then, the leader of the Movement of Free Citizens, actor Sergej Trifunović, announced his participation in the elections . In response to criticism of Jeremić's fellow party member, Vladimir Gajić, for this, he made an inappropriate sexual proposition on Twitter.
It should be noted that the pro-Western opposition made the decision to boycott the elections due to its low popularity in the country. Thus, according to the openly pro-Western Institute for European Affairs, as of mid-April, 61,9% of Serbian residents were ready to vote for the electoral bloc of the Serbian president “Aleksandar Vučić – For Our Children,” which is based on the Serbian Progressive Party.
In turn, the boycotting choice “Union for Serbia” would receive no more than 7,1% from fellow citizens.
The low popularity of non-systemic oppositionists among the people lies in the fact that at the dawn of the XNUMXs, almost all of them were members of the Democratic Party of Serbia, which came to power after the overthrow of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic and the first color “tractor” revolution in modern history.
During the decade of their reign, these people surrendered almost all Serbian heroes to The Hague, brought the state to poverty and made its economy colonially dependent on the West, in fact surrendered Kosovo, and destroyed the army.
Having lost to their opponents from the patriotic camp, these politicians quarreled among themselves, producing many dwarf parties, and reunited only at the end of 2018, as if on a command from the outside, which “accidentally” coincided with a tightening of Serbia’s principled position in the Kosovo negotiations.
In addition, almost every leader of the non-systemic pro-Western Serbian opposition has a long trail of scandals and murky affairs.
In particular, the former head of the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and former head of the UN General Assembly, Vuk Jeremic, was implicated in multi-million dollar money laundering schemes for which his foreign accomplices were arrested .
Why the same fate did not affect Jeremic himself, who regularly travels outside Serbia, one can only guess.
Serbia 's unpopular opposition leader calls for election boycott