2023-12-30 13:02:33
Thousands of people, opposition supporters, gathered on Saturday at a rally of the pro-democracy movement ProGlas in Belgrade city center. The group of intellectuals, artists and writers, which had called for voter participation during the election campaign, joined the opposition coalition “Serbia Against Violence”‘s call for a repeat election at the beginning of the week.
“These elections must be annulled,” said Marinika Tepić. The top official of the opposition association, who has been on hunger strike for 13 days, climbed the stage, visibly weakened, only with the help of her party friends. She reduced her speech to this single sentence. Immediately following the performance, as the organizers announced, Tepić was taken to hospital on the advice of doctors.
“We do not accept,” was written on the stage in large letters. The student group “Borba”, which also joined the protest following a 24-hour blockade of one of Belgrade’s busiest streets close to the government headquarters, played a song popular in the late 1980s by Belgrade rock group Ekaterina Velika: “This is our country, this is the country for all our citizens.”
The ProGlas group decided to make a short march to the nearby Constitutional Court, the final authority that might annul the elections.
Meanwhile, pro-government media reported that the participants in the rally were planning to take power by force.
According to official information, President Aleksandar Vučić’s right-wing ruling party SNS clearly won the parliamentary and local elections on December 17th. However, international election observers reported numerous irregularities during the vote.
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