Opposition Leader: Progressives Lose 20 Percent of Voter Support

Dragan Djilas (BETAPHOTO/MILOS MISKOV)

The Freedom and Justice Party’s leader, Dragan Djilas, said on July 26 that the Serbian Progressive Party “lost one-fifth of its electorate over the last six months, now at under 40 percent of voter support,” and that it would be impossible for the Progressives to win in Belgrade, even together with the Socialist Party of Serbia.

“That’s why there will be no elections, and a threat that there will be a new one in September…it’s not happening, because they won’t dare have one. As for the Freedom and Justice Party, we have been requesting a Belgrade vote for 16 months already. Regarding republican polls, the European Commission and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have issued relevant recommendations, and they need to be met for elections to be fair. The Progressives do not stand a chance of winning such polls,” Djilas said in an interview with the Nova S TV on July 26.

Djilas has said that violence was ubiquitous in the public space, and that we live in a country in which 19 children were killed just three months ago, where 23 women have been killed since the beginning of the year, where 73 percent of young people going to school said they were the victims of violence, 40 percent of which was physical.

In a comment on a decision to end the work of the inquiry committee established by the Parliament to discuss the circumstances that had led to two mass murders, Djilas said that the authorities realised that the inquiry committee would unveil the facts that would prove that the system did fail.