Despite widespread intimidation and violent incidents on election day in Mionica, the coalition list “United for Mionica,” composed of students and opposition forces, achieved a striking success. They won 10 out of 38 polling stations, securing 16 mandates in the local assembly. Meanwhile, the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) suffered a sharp decline, losing almost 20% of its votes compared to previous local elections and forfeiting 13 assembly seats.
Official results from the Mionica Municipal Election Commission show that the SNS list “Aleksandar Vučić – Best for Mionica” garnered 52.09% of the vote (22 mandates), while the student-opposition coalition took 38.93%. The SNS’s dramatic loss exposes cracks in what was long considered a stronghold, signaling voter fatigue with authoritarian tactics and electoral manipulation.
The day after the vote, Vučić personally visited the village of Tolić in Mionica, raising questions about the ruling party’s inability to accept the results peacefully. He publicly accused the opposition of inciting unrest and questioned why opposition representatives from other towns were present during voting—remarks widely seen as an attempt to intimidate and delegitimize the opposition’s victory.
Reports from election day reveal an alarming level of organized violence:
- Observers from CRTE were attacked, with vehicles damaged and mobile teams threatened, while local police failed to intervene.
- Members of the Green-Left Front were physically assaulted; MP Bogdan Radovanović sustained a head injury, with attackers seizing his phone.
- Masked men, apparently linked to organized networks, used a local kafana as a base to launch attacks on voters and opposition supporters, throwing bottles and chairs.
The SNS’s local apparatus, long accused of systemic coercion and voter manipulation, clearly mobilized its resources to suppress dissent, turning Mionica into what witnesses described as a “war zone”.
Despite this, the opposition-student coalition emphasized resilience: “Even with the full SNS machinery deployed, Mionica’s courage triumphed. We will be stronger and claim the future that belongs to us,” said Dragoljub Višić, a representative of the coalition.
The violent election day exposes SNS’s reliance on intimidation, organized aggression, and the complicity or inaction of law enforcement to maintain power. While Vučić claims the process was “relatively calm” on national media, the evidence from Mionica paints a very different reality—a stark reminder of the erosion of democratic norms and electoral integrity under his rule.
