Nationalist wins Serbian election
Tomislav Nikolić beats Boris Tadić in second round of presidential election.
Serbian voters yesterday (20 May) picked Tomislav Nikolić, a conservative populist, as the president who will lead Serbia into membership talks with the European Union.
Boris Tadić, in office since 2004, conceded defeat yesterday evening after a second round of voting in Serbia’s presidential election. Preliminary results based on a count of all constituencies gave Nikolić 49.8% to Tadić’s 47%. Turnout was 46%, low by Serbian standards.
Nikolić last night told supporters that he no longer belonged to any one party but was now the president of all Serbs. “We will not stray from the European path and we will not forget our brethren in Kosovo and Metohija,” he said, referring to Serbs in neighbouring Kosovo.
Nikolić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) had already taken the lead in a parliamentary election on 6 May, with some 24% of the vote to 22% for Tadić’s Democratic Party.
Despite Tadić’s defeat, it is expected that the new government will be formed through a coalition of Democrats and the Serbian Socialist Party (SPS) – the core of the current coalition.
The SPS, led by Ivica Dačić, interior minister of the outgoing government, doubled its support in the parliamentary election and had agreed to remain in a coalition with the Democrats. It was expected that Dačić – a former associate of Slobodan Milošević, Serbia’s late strongman – would become prime minister.
Dačić, however, said last night that Nikolić’s victory had made forming a government more complicated. Under Serbia’s constitution, it is the president who gives the mandate for forming a government.
Nikolić is a former associate of Vojislav Šešelj, a Bosnian Serbian warlord and founder of the Serbian Radical Party who is currently on trial for war crimes at a UN tribunal in The Hague. Nikolić, deputy party leader of the Radicals and a deputy prime minister in Milošević-era governments, broke with Šešelj in 2008 to form the SNS, which espouses a more moderate nationalism.
No major departure from current pro-EU policies is expected, although Nikolić is certain to stress Serbia’s role of protector of Kosovo’s Serbs. Serbia gained the status of a candidate for EU membership in March and hopes to begin accession talks by the end of the year. The EU has made that conditional on improved relations with Kosovo.
Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, and José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, congratulated Nikolić on his victory.
“We would like to congratulate Mr. Nikolić on his election as President of Serbia,” they wrote in a statement this morning. “We also wish to congratulate the people of Serbia on their elections on 6 and 20 May which were competitive and peaceful.”
Van Rompuy and Barroso said that the Serbian people had given “a very clear signal of support to the continued European orientation of government policy”. They called on Nikolić to continue reforms and to make further progress in talks with Kosovo.