Serbian Opposition Rally Claims Election was Rigged

Several thousand supporters of Serbian opposition parties staged a protest on Saturday in Belgrade, claiming that last Sunday's elections were rigged and urging citizens to vote in repeat elections at 15 polling stations scheduled for Wednesday.

They also demanded the resignation of the President of the Election Commission, RIK, Dejan Djurdjevic, and the director of the Institute of Statistics, Miladin Kovacevic.

Opposition leaders said that although they had different ideological views, they would unite to defend democratic institutions and the will of citizens, which they said were jeopardized by the government of Aleksandar Vucic and his Serbian Progessive Party, SNS.

Bosko Obradovic, leader of the rightwing Dveri party, which has been narrowly excluded from parliament by only one vote, called on Vucic to admit the election was manipulated on Sunday, which is Serbian Orthodox Easter. "The Serbian Progressive Party will not determine the votes, Serbian citizens will," Obradovic said.

Bojan Pajtic, leader of Democratic Party, said that regime's "insolence and arrogance" was best shown by the fact that "a dead man who is supposedly 144 years old today" had voted for the Progressive Party. "Aleksandar Vucic is your servant and not your master," Pajtic said.

Sasa Radulovic, leader of the "Enough is enough" movement, which won 6 per cent of the votes, said that there was numerous evidence that the elections were rigged, as dead people and non-existing citizens had voted and ballot boxes had been tampered with.

He called on people to supervise the polling stations at the repeat elections on Wednesday to ensure that no one can manipulated votes again.

"We are all together in the elections on Wednesday? and at the same time,...