Green-Left Official: We Have Repeatedly Requested Snap Belgrade Elections

Dobrica Veselinovic (BETAPHOTO/MILOS MISKOV)

Dobrica Veselinovic, an official of the Green-Left Front and a representative in the Belgrade City Assembly, has said that his party has long been advocating snap local elections and that the Front will repeat its demand for the dismissal of Mayor Aleksandar Sapic.

“Ever since the last elections closed on April 3 of last year, the Green-Left Front has been pushing for a new vote. We’ve made multiple requests via the media,” Veselinovic said in an interview for the Aug. 17 edition of the Politika daily, recalling that the Front submitted a motion for Sapic’s removal last year, but that it failed to win majority support in the assembly.

According to Veselinovic, Sapic’s dismissal would be “the best institutional path to extraordinary Belgrade elections.”

“We will again launch a motion for Sapic’s removal in cooperation with our fellow-opposition members. If the representatives of the ruling majority are indeed supportive of snap elections, then they, too, can back the motion,” Veselinovic stated.

He concluded by wondering why President Aleksandar Vucic – who has also voiced his approval of extraordinary elections – has not influenced his party’s local representatives “to launch institutional mechanisms for Mayor Sapic’s dismissal.”