© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Individuals stroll by an enormous election marketing campaign billboard that includes Aleksandar Vucic on the lodge Ambasador, the presidential candidate of the ruling SNS social gathering (Serbian Progressive Get together) in Nis, Serbia, April 1, 2022. REUTERS/Antonio Bronic
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BELGRADE (Reuters) -Serbia’s incumbent President Aleksandar Vucic is about to win presidential vote on Sunday with 59.8% of the votes, based on a projection by pollsters Ipsos and CeSID, primarily based on a pattern of the partial polling station rely.
Zdravko Ponos, a retired military basic representing the pro-European and centrist Alliance for Victory coalition is about to come back second with 17.1% of the votes.
Within the parliamentary vote Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Get together (SNS) is about to come back first with 43.6% of votes, Ipsos and CeSID projections confirmed.
The United for Victory opposition alliance trailed behind with 12.9% of the votes.
Because the SNS would seemingly fail to safe sufficient seats within the 250 parliament to rule alone, it should search coalition companions.
The Socialist Get together of Serbia, a very long time ally of the SNS and the possible coalition accomplice, is seen third with 11.6% of the votes.
In line with the State Election Fee turnout, primarily based on counting 7.7% of the citizens was 58.54%.
Vucic ran for the second five-year time period on a promise of peace and stability simply as Russia has invaded Ukraine, which has put Serbia below stress from the West to decide on between its conventional ties with Moscow and aspirations to affix the European Union (EU).
CeSID and CRTA pollsters reported a number of irregularities, together with photographing of ballots.
The opposition largely boycotted a parliamentary election in 2020, permitting Vucic’s SNS social gathering and its allies to safe 188 seats within the 250-seat parliament.
Voters from Kosovo, Serbia’s predominantly ethnic Albanian former province which declared independence in 2008, have been taken to polling stations in Serbia correct by bus.
SHADOW OF WAR
Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine has had a huge impact on campaigning in Serbia, which remains to be recovering from the Balkan wars and isolation of the Nineteen Nineties.
Serbia is nearly solely depending on Russian fuel, whereas its military maintains ties with Russia’s army.
The Kremlin additionally helps Belgrade’s opposition to the independence of Kosovo by blocking its membership to the United Nations.
Though Serbia backed two United Nations resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it refused to impose sanctions towards Moscow.
A veteran politician who served as info minister in 1998 below former strongman Slobodan Milosevic, Vucic has reworked himself from a nationalist firebrand to a proponent of EU membership, but additionally of army neutrality and ties with Russia and China.
Ponos has accused Vucic of utilizing the conflict in Ukraine in his marketing campaign to capitalise on folks’s fears.
Opposition and rights watchdogs additionally accuse Vucic and his allies of an autocratic model of rule, corruption, nepotism, controlling the media, assaults on political opponents and ties with organised crime. Vucic and his allies have repeatedly denied all these allegations.
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