Democratic Party Leader Expecting EU To Take Decisive Stand on Serbia Election Irregularities

Zoran Lutovac (BETAPHOTO/MILOS MISKOV/DS)

Democratic Party leader Zoran Lutovac on Jan. 7 said that in regard to irregularities registered during the Dec. 17 vote in Serbia, he was expecting from the European Union (EU) and the European Parliament (EP) to take a principled and decisive stand of not tolerating anything that would not be tolerated in the EU countries.

In an interview with BETA, Lutovac said that Serbia had been on the EU accession path for a long time now, while in the past 12 years, the country had been either stalling or moving backwards. “There is no rule of law and no freedom of the press, while crime and corruption have reached unimaginable proportions, and there are no free and fair elections either...,” Lutovac specified.

He added that the first step would be not to give legitimacy to vote rigging in Serbia, noting that in that context, the only right way was for the EU to support the values it advocated. “The first step toward building a democratic society could be setting up a commission which would, based on the presented evidence, suggest annulment of irregular voting and creation of conditions for holding free and fair elections,” the Democratic Party leader explained.

Asked about the way in which the European Commission and the EP could contribute to facilitating new elections in which parties could compete on a level playing field, Lutovac replied that North Macedonia and Montenegro were the examples showing that it was possible to create an atmosphere of significantly improved electoral conditions.

Lutovac stressed that the struggle to protect the will of the people expressed in the elections implied both, unity and determination, as well as establishing a social front. “It is crucial to reject lawlessness and demonstrate solidarity, while forms of the struggle can be different – from liberating institutions relying on of professionalism still remaining within them, through European mediators, all the way to extra-institutional struggle, which includes various forms of civil disobedience,” Lutovac concluded.