Fifth repeat vote ends Serbian parliament election process

N1

The Serbian parliamentary elections seem to finally be over following Sunday's fifth vote at a single polling station in the south of the country.

A total of 1,089 voters were registered to cast ballots at polling station number 6 in an elementary school in the hamlet of Veliki Trnovac which has a mixed majority Albanian minority Serbian population. This Sunday, 66.6 percent of 725 of them turned out to cast ballots for a fifth time. The the first on April 3 and following two were annulled due to reported irregularities and the fourth on June 23 was not held because the polling station board failed to convene.

An N1 reporter in Veliki Trnovac said that the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS – a member of the ruling coalition) decided not to file complaints over irregularities which means that the process of electing a new parliament will be over once the final results of the vote are published. SPS leader Ivica Dacic said: “For us this story is finished”.

The reporter said that the vote was free of tension with some voters attempting to cast ballots without ID documents.

The CRTA democracy watchdog NGO said that the Coalition of Albanians of the Valley won 698 votes, the SPS-JS coalition won 8 with other parties winning just 1 or 2 votes. If the results are confirmed the SPS will have 31 seats in the new parliament (not the 32 they counted on earlier) while Saip Kamberi’s Coalition of Albanians of the Valley will have an MP.

Once the final results of the vote are published, the clock starts running and the new parliament has to be formed within 30 days. Once it is formed and the MPs are confirmed, parliament has 90 days to elect a new government following party consultations with the president.