Serbian opposition members mired in squabbles over election boycott
The street march of the opposition “Boycott” that took place on February 8 in Belgrade was not as massive as previous ones, after the opposition Alliance for Serbia left the youth movement “One in Five Million” at the end of January.
Valentina Rekovic, one of the youth protesters, stated that while opposition leaders hypocritically talk about boycotting parliamentary elections, the parties they lead are ready to participate in local elections, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
The official organizer of the Boycott march, which is being held in Serbia for the second time, is the Civil Resistance organization. The protesters walked through the center of the Serbian capital, carrying a ballot box with an improvised ballot paper, which had only two numbers: “1. Aleksandar Vucic” and “2. Boycott.”
Protesters left this structure near the building of the Republican Election Commission.
“They marched like mannequins through Serbian cities, instead of formulating a clear idea of why the boycott was organized,” one of the leaders of the “One in Five Million” movement, Valentina Rekovic, commented on the actions of former comrades in the protest movement. “They go out into the streets after parties and cocktails and advocate a boycott, confusing people... And they don’t name the parties they belong to.” And they don’t talk about the decision of these parties to go to local elections, which misleads the public.”
At the same time, Rekovic stated that despite the reluctance to take part in the “farce of a declarative boycott of the elections,” her movement intends to be elected to parliament and is ready to begin active opposition to the “Vučić regime and its cartel” in April during the parliamentary elections, which are scheduled in Serbia on 26 April.
“We were in Brussels to demonstrate the unity of the opposition there,” commented on the action of the protest youth, one of the leaders of the Serbian opposition, the founder of the Serbian analogue of “Echo of Moscow” - the liberal radio “B92” and the mayor of Belgrade during the rule of pro-Western democrats, Dragan Djilas. “The opposition is principled and keeps its word, unlike some young people.”
It is characteristic that before the start of the Boycott actions, Djilas and his comrades in the protest movement traveled to Brussels, where they held consultations with members of the European Parliament and European officials.
Earlier, the European Union began preparing a platform for recognizing the boycott of parliamentary elections in Serbia as legitimate.
Serbian opposition members mired in squabbles over election boycott