Serbian Election Result Creates Few Waves in Region

The victory of the governing Serbian Progressive Party, SNS, and Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic in Sunday's elections in Serbia - which was widely expected - has created little stir in the region.

According to a count of 97.46 per cent of all ballots cast, Vucic's SNS won 48.25 per cent of the votes, which will translate to about 131 out of 250 seats in parliament - an absolute majority.

In neighbouring Kosovo, which Serbia still regards as its own territory, the fact that ethnic Serbs took part in the elections reawakened old arguments about whether this infringed on Kosovo's sovereignty.

A former member of Kosovo's Central Elections Commission, Fadil Maloku, said that allowing the OSCE to collect the votes of Serbian voters in Kosovo violated Kosovo's constitution as it does not recognize the term or idea of such "collections". Serbian elections in Kosovo prove that Kosovo is still not truly independent, he said.

The opposition nationalist Vetevendosje party accused the authorities of "intentionally avoiding the fact of Serbia's non-recognition of Kosovo's statehood, as well as a flagrant violation of the sovereignty".

In neighbouring Croatia, media focused on Serbian Prime Minister Vucic's complaint that Croatia's first Vice-Prime Minister, Tomislav Karamarko, had not congratulated him on his victory.

"He didn't congratulate me... I was the first to congratulate them [Karamarko's centre-right coalition]? I'll always congratulate anyone who wins," Vucic observed.

The Croatian media also focused on the strong result of the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party, SRS, led by the former war-crimes defendant, Vojislav Seselj, which came third in the elections after Vucic's SNS and the Socialist Party.

The results of...