Socialist Party

Ljubljana/Belgrade – The only news after the presidential and general elections in Serbia was the result of opposition parties, while everything else had been known in advance, as all mechanism for election victory had been in the hands of Aleksandar Vučić, Borut Šuklje, a former Slovenian diplomat and an expert on the Balkans, told the STA on Monday.

The results of Serbia's presidential and parliamentary elections show that Aleksandar Vucic and his Serbian Progressive Party (SPP) have won convincing victories.

In a joint forecast, election observer CeSID and the sociological organization Ipsos predict that Vucic will win a second five-year term as president, receiving almost 60% of the vote.

The leader of North Macedona's main opposition party, VMRO DPMNE, Hristijan Mickoski, joined the celebrations marking Viktor Orban's victory in Sunday's Hungarian elections at Orban's Fidesz party HQ in Budapest.

Albania's President, Ilir Meta, will end his mandate in office after winning a Constitutional Court battle with the ruling Socialist Party, which dismissed him via a vote in parliament nine months ago.

In a verdict on Wednesday, the Court said the accusations made against Meta "do not constitute serious violation of the constitution".

A BIRN Freedom of Information Request has revealed that Prime Minister Edi Rama on 29 September last year appointed his own former spokesperson, Endri Fuga, as head of the newly established Media and Information Agency, MIA. The appointment was not published and was disclosed only recently following the FOI request.

The Albanian Football Federation, FSHF, the country's football governing body, has accused Erion Veliaj, Socialist Party Mayor of Tirana, of using threats against board members ahead of a vote for the head of the Federation.

The leader of 'We continue the change', Kiril Petkov greets fans before the first session of the parliament in Sofia, December 3, 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE/VASSIL DONEV

The vote put an end to an almost year-long political logjam in Bulgaria, which now sees its biggest political shift in more than a decade.

The CEC, which is tasked with auditing the reports, is still crunching the numbers from the last election, which returned the Socialist Party of Prime Minister Edi Rama for an unprecedented third term in government.

But data from the financial reports seen by BIRN, compared with the going rate for political advertising on television, gives cause for suspicion.

Former pro-Russian president Igor Dodon quits as Socialist Party leader and flies to Moscow. Experts see his party's disintegration as unstoppable.

The Romanian Foreign Ministry said that state secretary Dan Neculaescu called on Ukraine on Friday to stop recognising Moldovan as a separate language from Romanian.