Serbian voters go to the polls on Sunday to vote in presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections. The incumbent president, Aleksandar Vucic, and his ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) are certain to extend their spell in power into a second decade.
This is the fifth nation-wide vote that Vucic and the SNS have contested since entering government in 2012. In that time, the president and his party have become political juggernauts, winning each election by an increasingly unassailable margin. Although part of this has to be attributed to Vucic’s personal talents and sharp political instincts – he is undoubtedly the shrewdest Serbian politician since former prime minister Zoran Djindjic, who was assassinated in 2003 – a much more significant factor is the impossible electoral conditions faced by the country’s opposition.
Since stepping up from defence minister to prime minister in 2014, and then president in 2017, Vucic has copied from the playbook of his ally and neighbour, Viktor Orban. He has transformed Serbia into a hybrid regime, a mix of democracy and authoritarianism where democratic processes aren’t a total sham – like they are in, say, Belarus or Syria – but where the outcome is never really in doubt.
