University of Belgrade professor Jovo Bakić, a candidate on the Students’ List for Serbia’s upcoming snap parliamentary elections, said he does not expect major incidents on election day, arguing that it would be difficult to organize groups across the country.
Speaking in an interview with the weekly Vreme, Bakić said he believed any potential attempts to disrupt the voting process could be concentrated in larger cities such as Belgrade and Novi Sad.
“Maybe they can concentrate on Belgrade or Novi Sad, since a convincing defeat of the Progressives is expected there. Maybe they will try something, we will see. In any case, we are ready,” Bakić said when asked about the possibility of groups being deployed to cause incidents.
He said that if the Students’ List achieves what he described as convincing victories in Novi Sad, Belgrade, Kragujevac and Niš, he believed that electoral irregularities would not be sufficient to change the overall outcome.
Bakić also said that an acknowledgment of defeat by the authorities would be a welcome development, but questioned whether that would happen.
“Knowing the nature of that regime, and especially its tendency toward systematic lying about everything and anything, it can be expected that they will lie about that as well,” he said.
Bakić added that the Students’ List could form an operational government capable of addressing what he described as the country’s basic problems within a relatively short period of around 18 months.
The remarks come ahead of parliamentary elections in Serbia, amid heightened political tensions and competing expectations over the conduct and outcome of the vote.
