Pre-Election Elections May Be Opposition's Last Chance to Mobilize Disillusioned Citizenry

Dubravka Stojanovic (BETAPHOTO/MEDIJA CENTAR BEOGRAD/DS)

The idea of opposition pre-election elections is being increasingly mentioned in recent weeks as a topic that was broached by the Free Serbia Parliament organization after Hungary's example, where the opposition won a local election in the capital Budapest after picking a joint candidate.

In an interview with BETA, playwright Minja Bogavac and historian Dubravka Stojanovic agreed that this would be a good way to mobilize disillusioned voters.

Bogavac said on April 11 that it was important that the opposition was organizing itself and that it hold a pre-election election, as this may be the only opportunity to bring many disillusioned people who have stopped voting back to the political process. "We cannot forget that those people are in fact the majority and that any election has less legitimacy without their participation," she told BETA.

Stojanovic sees an opposition pre-election election as the best way to isolate the best candidates and find new faces. "It's also a way for citizens to return to politics, to return to the election process and realize that they are the key factor in them and that they need to be making the decisions," she told BETA.