Pajtic: Vucic Has Carried His Point in Brushing off December Election Fraud

Bojan Pajtic (Beta/Dragan Gojic)

Bojan Pajtic, a professor at the Novi Sad Faculty of Law, said on July 15 that the European Parliament's resolution on irregularities at the December 2023 elections in Serbia had been "brushed off and relativized" due to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic's willingness to sacrifice national interests, but also because some opposition parties ran in the June election.

Pajtic told BETA in an interview that several circumstances relativized the EP resolution.

"The latest example is the participation of a part of the opposition in the June elections, after protesting earlier over election fraud in December. Due to that circumstance, it is difficult to dispute the legitimacy of the June elections, though the election condition recommendations from the Resolution and from ODIHR were not implemented. The other reason why the EP Resolution was relativized and brushed off is Vucic's readiness to sacrifice the interests of the state of Serbia and the people before international actors in order to extend his government," Pajtic said.

According to him, Vucic's persistence in executing a lithium exploitation project and his invitation to France to build nuclear plants in Serbia indicate that the president of the country will pander to any economic and foreign-policy interest of the West in order to bolster his regime.

"Through that pandering to the West, Vucic carried his point in brushing off the December election fraud and in becoming a constructive factor in Serbia and the Western Balkans," he said, adding that the outcome was that the Europarliamentarians who voted for the Resolution on election fraud in Serbia no longer have the credibility to keep insisting in improved election conditions, because elections likely will not happen before 2027.

Pajtic went on to say that only a unified opposition could threaten the Aleksandar Vucic regime and that it would have to be united in solving the pain points for Serbian citizens and concentrating as much as possible on preventing Rio Tinto from opening a lithium mine in Serbia.