Jobbik MEP Gyöngyösi: The Serbian Elections and its Lessons

Parliamentary elections held in Serbia last weekend did not hold too many surprises for those familiar with recent political developments in the small Balkan republic. In an election originally announced for 26 April but postponed amid the coronavirus pandemic, Alaksandar Vučić’s populist right-wing Serbia Progressive Party (SNS) snatched over 60 percent of the vote and some 190 mandates in the 250-seat Skupština, the Serbian parliament.

According to Jobbik MEP Márton Gyöngyösi, the dominance of SNS is further underlined by the fact that virtually all real opposition parties dropped out of parliament regardless of parliamentary threshold cut down to 3 percent prior to the elections.

Ivica Dačić’s Socialist Party scoring second place with just over 10 percent of the vote functions more like a satellite organization in a permanent governing coalition with the SNS. Thus, the strongest and only opposition party in the Serbian parliament will be the novel formation of Aleksandar Šapić, barely scraping through the threshold.

Among the main reasons for the poor showing of the Serbian opposition is the nature and the character of the regime constructed by Vučić over the years.

However, also the self-delusive tactics of the opposition parties to boycott the elections and its hopes to challenge an increasingly dictatorial system by means of passive resistance have proven vain.

The Serbian elections, including the misguided tactics of the opposition are replete with lessons that must be closely studied by those that want to see an end to illiberal political experimenting.

For years analysts have been drawing comparisons between the authoritarian system of Vučić and that of Viktor Orbán in its immediate neighbourhood, Hungary – explains Gyöngyösi.

Considering the turbulent history of the region, the context in which Orbán and Vučić rose to power is different.

The hairpin bends along their political career to arrive at populist illiberalism are the first striking similarity: while Orbán started his political carrier as an ultra-liberal anti-Communist as a Soros-scholar, Vučić came on the scene as an aid to one of the great mass murderers of the late-20th century, Slobodan Milošević, serving as his propaganda minister. Like in Hungary, in Vučić’s Serbia party loyalty is the only key to success, media freedom curtailed, opposition parties threatened (in Serbia sometimes killed), corruption rampant, while an ever increasing mass of the young generations leave their homeland, either because it is not able to or willing to play by the rules of the regime.