Tens of thousands of citizens demonstrated this Saturday, December 30, in the center of Belgrade against the alleged electoral fraud in the December 17 elections, of which they accuse the president of Serbia, the populist Aleksandar Vučić. Opposition leader Marinika Tepic attended the protest, where she appeared visibly weakened by the hunger strike she began two weeks ago to reject the results of the elections.
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The December 17 process is under scrutiny due to allegations of irregularities, mainly in the election of the capital's authorities, and This Saturday, December 30, thousands of people gathered to protest shouting “Thieves!” against the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS, nationalist right), which was declared the winner.
The demonstrations have been repeated almost daily since the results were announced, demanding the annulment and subsequent repetition of the process, but the situation has worsened since last weekend, when violent incidents occurred and several protesters were arrested.
The ProGlas initiative, the opposition coalition “Serbia against violence” (SPN) and more than twenty NGOs are calling for the annulment of the legislative and local elections held this month.
In the elections on December 17, a vote was taken to elect the members of the national Parliament, and at the same time the new municipal power bodies in 65 cities, including Belgrade.
At the national level, the SNS won with 47% of the votes, double the support obtained by SPN. AND, in Belgrade, the SNS also received the most votesbut even before the results of the municipal elections were known, the opposition coalition (SPN) asked to repeat the vote after denouncing irregularities.
After two weeks of protests, this Friday, December 29, protesters began prolonged blockades of the city's streets, demanding that the authorities make public the electoral registry, through which they intend to demonstrate the irregularities in what was announced as an avalanche of votes in favor of the candidates of the party of President Aleksandar Vučić, in power for 11 years.
Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) indicated in their preliminary report that the process had not met the conditions to be considered fair.
The opposition Tepic: fragile and determined
Social democratic leader Marinika Tepic appeared before the crowd raising a fist as a sign that she joined their fight and requesting once again that the elections be repeated, as he has done since he began his hunger strike on December 18.
The 49-year-old woman, a legislator and former journalist with Romanian roots, has become the visible face of the protests. After her appearance today, her work group feared that she would have to be hospitalized due to poor health conditions after 12 days without eating food.
Also present at this Saturday's protest, called by the ProGlas civic initiative, was Radomir Lazovic, another opposition leader who requested the support of the international community, which he urged not to remain silent and to appoint a commission to document the irregularities and force to a repetition of the process.
Vučić says these are fabricated reports
The Serbian president and leader of the Progressive Party, Aleksandar Vučić, has dismissed the accusations, ensuring that they are based on fabricated reports from abroad to overthrow him.
This Saturday's protest was symbolically called in the same area of Belgrade where concentrations against Slobodan Milosevic were held in the 1990s. The protesters accuse Vučić, a former ultranationalist ally of Milosevic, of reproducing their authoritarian practices.
Russia, with which Vučić maintains close ties even though it also aspires to make Serbia part of the European Union, has offered its full support to the Serbian leader in his actions to contain the demonstrations.
With AP and EFE
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