SERBIA: Pro-Western incumbent Boris Tadic and rightist Tomislav Nikolic cast their ballots in a tense run-off election for President

Record ID: 327782

  • Title: SERBIA: Pro-Western incumbent Boris Tadic and rightist Tomislav Nikolic cast their ballots in a tense run-off election for President
  • Date: 21st May 2012
  • Summary: SLATE INFORMATION
  • Embargoed: 5th June 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Serbia
  • Country: Serbia
  • Topics: Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA3AQRJWWYJ9NLY0PJD0OUJ6DPG
  • Story Text: Pro-Western incumbent Boris Tadic and rightist Tomislav Nikolic cast their votes on Sunday (May 20) in a run-off election for Serbian president and the right to lead the struggling nation into talks on joining the European Union.
    Despite economic stagnation and rising unemployment, Tadic is tipped to defeat Nikolic for the third time since 2004 as Serbia slowly sheds the legacy of a decade of war and isolation under late strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
    A Tadic victory would keep power firmly in the hands of his Democratic Party.
    Tadic arrived at a polling station in the heart of Belgrade's upmarket old town pushing his elderly father in a wheel chair.
    "Today is a crucial day when we will decide which direction we will take in the next five years and even the next decade. And the world is watching to see our democratic maturity. It's an opportunity for us to reaffirm the orientation of the country towards the European civilisation", Tadic said after voting.
    Opposition allegations of fraud in parliamentary and first-round presidential elections two weeks ago could cause an upset, or cast a shadow over the result of the run-off if Nikolic carries out a threat to call supporters into the streets.
    Election authorities and foreign monitors found no evidence of the 500,000 votes Nikolic says were forged in the parliamentary and first-round presidential polls.
    Nikolic's Serbian Progressive Party says its monitors will confiscate ballot boxes and close polling stations if they observe irregularities.
    "I am convinced that I am the best choice for Serbia, but it is up to the citizens of Serbia now, and I will congratulate the winner," Nikolic said after casting his ballot in New Belgrade - a socialist era high rise apartment district of the Serbia capital.
    A former member of the ultra-nationalist Radical Party, Nikolic was in government with Milosevic when Serbia was bombed by NATO in 1999, but since last losing to Tadic in 2008 he has tried to reinvent himself as a pro-European conservative.
    Tadic, who beat Nikolic by less than one percentage point in the first round of the elections, says his opponent's change in direction is purely cosmetic.
    Handing power to Nikolic, he says, would slam the brakes on reform and reverse the process of reconciliation between Serbia and its ex-Yugoslav neighbours since Milosevic's ouster in 2000.
    Nikolic, with his straight-talking, man-of-the-people manner appeals to rural Serbs and voters tired of the grinding transition from socialism to capitalism.
    At least rhetorically, the two sides differ little in economic policy or their approach to Kosovo, Serbia's former province where Belgrade is propping up a de facto ethnic partition four years after the Albanian-majority territory declared independence.
    A Nikolic victory would be likely to usher in a difficult period of "cohabitation" with a Democrat-led government.
    Nikolic's party narrowly won the parliamentary vote but the Democrats, who came second, are widely expected to make a coalition deal with the Socialists and form a government.
    Under the constitution, the prime minister is more powerful than the president, but the head of state can hold up legislation.
    Nikolic accuses Tadic of overseeing a creeping culture of cronyism, deepening government control over the media and an economic slide that has seen unemployment reach 24 percent.
    The EU made Serbia, population 7.3 million, an official candidate for membership in March, and could set a date for talks early next year if Belgrade takes steps to improve relations with Kosovo.
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