Serbian democracy watchdog official warns of polarized society

N1

An official of the Serbian democracy watchdog organization CeSID told N1 on Wednesday that the gathering of President Aleksandar Vucic’s opponents and supporters in front of the state TV (RTS) building is proof of a deeply polarized society, adding that the ruling party should calm things.

CeSID official Bojan Klacar said that the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) should “relax political life and send a strong message that it is open for a dialogue and ready to discuss important issues in order to ease tensions in communication between political players”. “This atmosphere could benefit someone in the short term but in the long term it brings consequences,” he warned.  

A group of supporters of the 1 in 5 Million organization and opposition activists gathered in front of the RTS building waiting for President Vucic to appear for a talk show. A group of Vucic supporters also appeared hurling insults at their rivals with some pushing and shoving despite a police presence.  

According to Klacar, Serbia is constantly faced with similar situations bordering on incidents. “It’s a good thing that there are relatively little incidents but as the elections draw closer it seems that there will be increasingly more potential incident situations,” he said, adding that the ruling party should hit the brakes.  

“Civil society and the international community can’t do the job of political parties,” he said. Klacar said that the SNS has to draw up a strategy to ease the possible negative effects of an election boycott which part of the opposition is advocating. “The worst outcome for the ruling coalition is for only the SNS and the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) to win seats in parliament. It will be hard for them to present that as a pluralist parliament,” he said.