Serbia's election saga and the implications for its EU path

Following is my comment on the presidential runoff vote held in Serbia on 20 May and its implications, as published on the site of the Institute for Regional and International Studies (www.iris-bg.org):

Tomislav Nikolić of the opposition Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) has won the runoff presidential elections in Serbia held on 20 May and will be the country’s next president. He beat the incumbent Boris Tadić of the Democratic Party (DS) with 49.8% to 47%, according to preliminary estimates made by pollster CeSID. The election results have several implications.

Serbia’s novel, mysterious ways with the ex-Soviet Union

Serbia has lately shown a surprising activity in its relations with some countries from the former USSR. These seem to be just the next embodiment of the Balkan country’s wandering dualism in foreign policy, predicated on the two imperatives of European Union membership and inalienability of Kosovo.

The presidential bid in Serbia remains important, both for the show and for the institutions

Serbia held on Sunday, 6 May, a comprehensive election that didn’t pose many surprises but remains important in terms of the repositioning of the main political players on the domestic scene and the implications for the institutional checks and balances. Serbian citizens went to the polls to elect members of the national parliament and the regional parliament of the northern Vojvodina province, local councillors and mayors and a president. However formal and inconsequential the election of a president in a parliamentary democracy may seem, in Serbia this vote carries a special charge. It is both an outright, individualised expression of the performance of the main parties and actually a determinant of the balance of power among Serbia’s main institutions, given the president has the right to be formally member of a political party and keeps his influence there and in the parliamentary caucus.