Green-Left Front: Opposition Could Win in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Nis

Radomir Lazovic (BETAPHOTO/AMIR HAMZAGIC)

Co-president of the Green-Left Front Radomir Lazovic believes that the opposition has a chance of winning the upcoming June 2 local elections in Belgrade, Belgrade’s individual municipalities, Novi Sad, Nis and Valjevo.

“I know that the situation in Belgrade is worse now than on Dec. 17,” he said in a May 26 guest appearance on Nova TV’s Utisak Nedelje (Impression of the Week) talk show, referencing the elections held late last year. In Lazovic’s opinion, “the only way” the incumbent Serbian Progressive Party stands a chance of winning the vote for the Belgrade City Assembly and the municipal administrations of Stari Grad, Vracar, Novi Beograd, Palilula and Vozdovac, is if the opposition “gives up the fight.”

Addressing the election boycott of 2020, the politician recalled that his organization had made the decision to withdraw from that vote yet that he now believes it was a mistake.

The upcoming elections, he said, are again a game of “unbalanced odds” where “the government has every resource and manipulates in many ways.” “A tyrant will never ensure fair elections. We have to beat them in such an unfair vote,” Lazovic concluded.

Appearing in the same show, Milos Jovanovic – the leader of the New Democratic Party of Serbia, which is boycotting the Belgrade elections – stated that the voting conditions are now worse than last December. According to him, many things have become worse while nothing good has been achieved since the previous elections. As examples, he mentioned that the elections campaign “has never been so short,” that there is no insight into the voter roll and that phantom voters are still an issue.