Serbia's Opposition Fails to Unite Ahead of Polls

The former ruling Democratic Party (DS) and its splinter groups, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Social Democratic Party (SDS), failed to agree on a joint electoral list on Monday, meaning they will run against the popular Progressives on their own.

Their failure to agree came two days before the final session of the country's parliament under its current mandate.

After Monday's final round of negotiations, Democratic Party president Bojan Pajtic said there was no chance of a joint list with the other two parties.

"The citizens of Serbia are not interested in? who will go with who in a coalition. They are interested in real-life matters and these elections are a question of the survival of Serbia," Pajtic told Beta news agency.

However, just an hour earlier, Liberal Democratic Party official Kenan Hajdarevic wrote on Twitter that an agreement has been reached.

Monday's failed negotiations are just the latest in a series of attempts to create a joint list over the past two months.

Some Serbian political analysts have suggested that Serbia's liberal opposition parties must set aside their quarrels and unite to have any chance of competing with the ruling Progressive Party at the upcoming pre-term parliamentary elections.

Both the LDP and SDS are splinter parties that emerged out of the DS. Cedomir Jovanovic's LDP was formed in 2005 and Boris Tadic's SDS was formed following the DS's defeat at elections in 2012.

Tadic's abandoning of the DS after it lost in 2012 was described as treason by some DS members and blamed for the party's bad results at the elections in 2014 when it won only 5.9 per cent of the vote.

At the same elections, both the LDP and SDS struggled to secure places in parliament....