Serbia's crucial parliamentary elections ended on Sunday night
after 13 hours of voting. The nationalist Serbian Radical Party
(SRS) led all other parties or coalitions with a high voter
turnout.
Based on 15.5 percent of total votes cast in the parliamentary
elections, RIK announced that the SRS had won 27.06 percent of
votes to remain the single strongest party in the 250-seat
parliament, but without a government-forming majority.
According to the RIK, Serbian President Boris Tadic's
pro-Western Democratic Party (DS) won 22.59 percent, Prime Minister
Vojislav Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia-New Serbia
coalition (DSS-NS) 16.5 percent, the G17 Plus 7.12 percent, the
Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) 6.1 percent and the coalition led
by the Liberal Democratic Party 5.47 percent.
The election monitoring agency Center for Free Elections and
Democracy (CESID) also published its preliminary results based on
80 percent of the processed sample.
According to the CESID results translating into the number of
seats, the SRS will have 81 seats, DS 65 seats, DSS-NS coalition 48
seats, G17 Plus 19 seats, SPS 16 seats, the LDP-led coalition 14
seats, Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians three seats, the List for
Sandzak coalition two seats and the Serbian Union of Roma and
Romany Party one seat each.
CESID Executive Director Zoran Lucic said that the future
government would possess strong legitimacy due to the high
60-percent turnout.
The Republic Electoral Commission is obligated to publish the
final, official results of the parliamentary elections by Jan. 25,
after which the new parliament will be formed in a month.
The elections came five days before UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari is
set to submit a proposal on the future status of Kosovo, an issue
that will remain as the main challenge for the future
government.
Most Serbs remain strongly opposed to losing the province, while
ethnic Albanians, accounting for some 90 percent of Kosovo's 2
million citizens, have been demanding independence.
(Xinhua News Agency January 22, 2007)
