Belgrade:Just 18 months after being re-elected president, Serbia’s long-time leader Aleksandar Vucic is looking to tighten his grip on power with another round of elections, in a risky gambit following months of protest.
While Vucic will not be on the ballot in Sunday’s parliamentary and local elections, the president remains everywhere in Serbia — plastered on billboards and skyscrapers, featured in social media videos and 24-hour coverage on news channels.
For the Belgrade-based Centre for Research, Transparency and Accountability, Vucic’s “appearances… are creating the impression that presidential, rather than parliamentary, provincial, and local elections are taking place”.
“President Vucic occupies almost half of the time and space in the informative-political content of the most influential media,” the think tank said in a report.
The 53-year-old has carefully cultivated the image of a tireless leader, dedicated to investment and job creation.
Sunday’s vote will serve as a referendum on Vucic’s government following back-to-back shootings earlier this year that spurred mass demonstrations.
Vucic and his ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) will be under additional pressure as soaring inflation saps the public’s spending power.
To combat the scourge, Vucic has been on a spending spree ahead of the December 17 contest, providing cash handouts to families and the elderly along with an increase in pensions.
“My job is not to align myself with [European policy], but to follow my people, the citizens of Serbia. As long as that’s my job, that’s how it will be,” Vucic told a rally this month.
To his supporters, Vucic’s stint in office has brought order and billions in investments to the once chaotic country thanks to his success at balancing ties between the East and West.
But opponents say Vucic has increasingly relied on autocratic measures to keep the opposition in disarray and media outlets under his thumb, including cracking down on dissenting voices.
The opposition had been calling for early elections since May following two fatal shootings in Serbia — including a massacre at Belgrade elementary school — that triggered a mass movement against the government and brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets.
The Serbia Against Violence movement is hoping to resuscitate Serbia’s perennially divided and anaemic political opposition, with observers closely watching local elections in the capital, where Vucic’s allies will likely face their biggest challenges.
For months, Vucic has repeatedly dismissed the protests as a political stunt and regularly aired accusations that foreign powers were orchestrating the rallies.
A former ultra-nationalist ally of strongman Slobodan Milosevic, the politician has held power in some form or another since 2012.
The president has long boasted of overseeing construction of extensive infrastructure programmes, including a network of highways and a revamped rail line.
And while he has sought investment from abroad, Vucic has remained a dedicated defender of issues important to voters — namely by refusing to recognise the independence of the breakaway province of Kosovo.
Talks with the Pristina government over hammering out a landmark deal to pave the way for a semblance of normalised ties all but crumbled earlier this year, with Vucic refusing to sign the EU and US-backed agreement — citing a pain in his right hand that would likely last “years”.
It has been an impressive turnaround for the man who broke onto the national political scene as Milosevic’s hardline information minister during the war in Kosovo.
The change was sudden.
In 2008, he left the ultra-nationalist Radical Party and founded the conservative, pro-European SNS, which won the 2012 legislative elections, paving his way to the top office.
He has rotated through a range of other positions including prime minister, deputy premier and defence chief.
But even as he polished his image, Vucic has been reluctant to abandon some ultra-nationalist leanings.
He has repeatedly stopped short of denouncing Bosnian Serb leaders accused of atrocities during the 1990s conflicts, while several war criminals have been rehabilitated in state-backed media outlets under his watch.