SPS: Election rules same for all, Serbia's opposition seeks excuse for failure

SPS recalled that the ballot rules have not been changed for a decade and have been same for all participants and concluded the reason for opposition’s threat of boycotting the vote next spring if the conditions weren't changed was “somewhere else, and not in the election rules.” It did not specify.

In a statement, the party, led by Ivica Dacic, Serbia's Foreign Minister, also said the country went through "a series of election cycles to its democratic framework without any objections even by the respective international institutions. That, according to SPS, proved “the high election standards in many years.”

Commenting Serbia’s opposition demands from last December for free media and free and fair election process, SPS said that “for a successful election race one needs to come up with a clear strategy about the country’s progress, and if you don’t have it, the moaning over ballot rules serves only as an excuse for failure.”

“That’s the only programme, only politics of the part of the opposition led by Dragan Djilas and Bosko Obradovic (the leaders of the Alliance for Serbia),” the SPS statement said.

The opposition, however, remains determined to boycott the general elections next spring of the authorities don’t cede to the request for the fair and free ballot and free media.

All relevant opposition parties gave the regime a deadline to meet the demands by mid-September or they would officially announce the boycott in the second half of that month.

After last series of ballots in which it preformed poorly, the opposition complained about alleged conditioning of state-owned companies' employees to vote for the SNS, of forcing them to make a photo of their ballot paper as a proof, to secure between five to ten "safe votes" for the party and some other mechanisms which it said led to rigged elections.

SNS denied all allegations.