The Economist: Vucic's victory

SERBIA’S political landscape is not the same any more. On March 16th Aleksandar Vucic (pictured), the leader of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), won an overwhelming electoral victory, shattered the opposition and cleared out several veterans from the Serbian parliament. “We thought it would be good, but didn’t even dare hope it would be as good as this,” said Braca Grubacic, a senior member of SNS.

With nearly all votes counted, Mr Vucic’s SNS and their allies were on 48% of the vote, which would translate into 158 seats in the 250-seat parliament. This means that Mr Vucic does not need to seek any coalition partners to rule as prime minster. Ivica Dacic, the outgoing prime minister and leader of the Socialist Party of Serbia, and his allies, gained a respectable 14% which would translate into 44 seats. As the results came out Mr Dacic said he was happy to have survived a “political tsunami”.

The Democratic Party, and allies, which led Serbia until 2012, barely passed the 5% threshold necessary to get into parliament and will get 19 seats. Their vote was decimated by the recent decision of Boris Tadic, the party’s former leader and Serbia’s former president, to form his own party, which picked up 6% and 18 seats. Parties representing ethnic minorities, which do not need the same number of votes to pass the 5% threshold, have taken 11 seats.

The question now is whether Mr Vucic will choose to rule alone or with coalition partners. Some say that it would be better to include Mr Dacic and Mr Tadic into the government so they fight one another rather than Mr Vucic. 

Serbia’s opposition looked tired and without new ideas during the campaign. Mr Vucic came across as the only Serbian leader “ready and able” to take the tough measures needed, according to Mr Grubacic. Mr Vucic spent most of his career in the extreme nationalist Serbian Radical Party, but he now presents himself as an ardent pro-European and moderate right-of-centre leader. He played up his connections with the United Arab Emirates, which provided an important soft loan to the country, and whose leaders (he claims) want to invest in Serbia. In a country prone to sleaze, he ran on an anti-corruption ticket claiming that a vote for anyone but him was a vote to deliver the country back into the hands of crooked tycoons.

Many fear that, with untrammeled power, Mr Vucic will succumb to the temptations of authoritarianism. Yet the majority of Serbs seem to be more worried about their jobs and the rising cost of living than their democracy. Middle-class Belgraders, whose standard of living rose in the years after the fall of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, now say that things have not been so tough for years. Unemployment is at some 26%. GDP growth this year is expected to be 1.3%

A new government should be appointed by May 1st. If Mr Vucic decides not to take any coalition partners beyond giving minor jobs to ethnic-minority party leaders, the new team is likely to be up and running sooner.