(CN) — Serbia is in the midst of political turmoil as protesters demand a new vote and opposition figures go on hunger strike following what they say were rigged parliamentary and local elections that tightened Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic’s grip on power.
Wednesday saw the 10th day of protests since Serbs went to the polls on Dec. 17. Opposition leaders are calling for a massive rally on Saturday to demand new elections. Meanwhile, seven opposition leaders have gone on hunger strike in a bid to draw attention to the contested election.
The Kremlin accuses Western powers of seeking to destabilize Serbia, Russia’s traditional ally in the Balkan region, by supporting the protests in an effort to bring down Vucic’s government and turn Belgrade more firmly toward the West.
Brussels and Washington, though, have refrained from taking strong actions, though they’ve urged for calm and backed probes into claims of election fraud.
“I have every confidence Serbia will come through these challenges with its democracy strengthened,” said Christopher R. Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Serbia, on social media. “In the hours and days ahead, Serbia’s leaders and its citizens should remember: The legitimacy of democratic processes depends upon transparency and on the readiness of all parties, winning or losing, to respect the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box.”
On Sunday, protests turned violent as crowds tried to storm the heavily guarded city hall in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. Videos showed protesters breaking windows in the building and clashing with police. Dozens of people were arrested, sometimes violently. Several officers were injured.
On Wednesday, prosecutors said they would charge protesters with the crime of seeking a violent change of the constitutional order, as reported by the news outlet Balkan Insight.
Serbian and outside election observers say there is evidence of widespread election fraud, including vote buying and ballot box stuffing.
On Wednesday, the Council of Europe, a pan-European human rights watchdog, said it would send a delegation to Serbia in early January to talk with Serbian authorities about the election.
Serbia is a major flashpoint in European politics. Since 2012, it has been on the path toward becoming a European Union member but the conflict over Kosovo and Serbia’s historical ties to Russia have made its entry into the bloc deeply problematic.
Brussels is under pressure to take a stronger stance to force Serbia to uphold democratic standards as it seeks EU membership. The EU is calling for an investigation into election irregularities.
Vucic, a former information minister under Serbian strongman Slobodan Milošević, is viewed with deep skepticism because of his nationalistic and authoritarian behavior. Still, he has succeeded in maintaining good relations with both the West and Moscow.
In the Dec. 17 ballot, Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party won the parliamentary elections by getting about 47% of the vote. The main opposition, the pro-European Union coalition Serbia Against Violence, took in about 24%.
In elections for Belgrade’s city government, though, Vucic’s party was declared the winner by a narrow margin, winning about 39% of the vote while the opposition took in 34%.
Protesters and opposition leaders accuse Vucic’s party of stealing the win in Belgrade. Among other tricks, they say people who were not allowed to vote in the capital were bussed in from outside the city.
CRTA, a group of Serbian election observers, said the election was deeply flawed and that the fraud likely swung the outcome in Belgrade. It said voters were illegally brought in for the Belgrade election from various parts of Serbia, Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Raša Nedeljkov, program director at CRTA, told Politico that it might have been Serbia’s most compromised election in recent history. Nedeljkov said outside experts should conduct an audit of the voter rolls and oversee new elections.
“It’s absolutely essential for this issue to be internationalized, because the country does not have the capacity at this moment to solve this issue on its own through democratic means, since the authorities deny the existence of any problem,” he told Politico.
Vucic has denied election rigging.
“This was the cleanest and fairest election we’ve had so far,” he told journalists this week. “Everyone knows that in Belgrade they don’t have any valid objections because they know that everything was clean … Like children, they are unable able to admit defeat.”
Meanwhile, opposition leaders have begun hunger strikes. One of them, Marinika Tepić, is carrying out her hunger strike from inside Belgrade’s central election commission building.
“I have no intention to give up until fake elections are annulled, until they admit to electoral fraud, and until the will of the people is defended,” Tepic told AFP.
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.