Bandovic: One in Four Serbians Intimidated Over Elections

One in four respondents in a public opinion survey conducted by the organization said they had been intimidated in connection with the elections, and one in three was offered payment for their vote. The figures were given to N1 by Igor Bandovic, director of the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCBP), commenting on violence against citizens in Uzice and the campaign rallies still to come.

“We conducted a public opinion survey that shows fairly discouraging results when it comes to citizens’ trust in the police. One in four respondents said they had been intimidated in connection with the elections, and one in three was offered payment for their vote. That is the general atmosphere,” Bandovic says.

The comment came after N1 published the piece at 7:46 a.m., and the Nova portal carried it the same day at 8:47 a.m. Srpske.rs had already reported on the Uzice incident itself in “Uzice After the SNS Rally: Two Versions of the Same Square.” Bandovic’s assessment adds a new layer to that story: for the first time, it puts a number behind the sense that violence has become a fixture of the election campaign.

What happened in Uzice

Bandovic’s remarks were prompted by a rally held by the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) on Saturday in Uzice, attended by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. Marshals providing security for the event beat a person at Partizan Square, and tensions remained high even after the rally had ended.

Bandovic says what happened is likely a preview of what could unfold in the coming months, ahead of the SNS rally already announced for Novi Sad, where Vucic is expected to appear again.

“Violence has become part of the election environment,” Bandovic said.

The overlap between state and party security

The BCBP director assesses that the Uzice incident was not an isolated case but the product of two mechanisms working in parallel.

“Institutions, the police above all, are not neutral,” Bandovic said, describing how, in his view, state bodies in practice protect one political side.

On the pattern of behavior on the ground, Bandovic told N1: “Selective use of the police and the SNS’s party security.” According to him, the two mechanisms serve the same end, the party in power. He adds that unidentified individuals show up acting as enforcers at rallies, both those organized by the ruling party and those organized by the opposition, while the police remain passive toward them. There is, he says, no clear answer to why these individuals are so well protected.

In Bandovic’s assessment, citizens who hold different views become subject to special treatment as a result.

“Citizens who think differently are being presented as a security problem,” Bandovic says. He links this to a practice that has been going on for a year and a half now, ever since part of the public began labeling citizens as “blockaders,” so that, in his words, the authorities’ calculus, after months of intensive propaganda, comes to treat such citizens as a security threat.

When did this violence start

Bandovic does not tie election-related violence solely to this year’s campaign. He says it already appeared during the local elections and has gradually become part of a pattern since then, one that, in his assessment, threatens freedom of assembly and political organizing.

The deadlines for calling the October elections fall on September 3 and 10, since the campaign must by law run for at least 45 and at most 60 days. At the time Bandovic spoke to N1, the elections had not yet been formally called.

A warning about two possible outcomes

The BCBP director warns that a peaceful resolution of the political crisis is not possible as long as representatives of the authorities treat part of the citizenry as adversaries in a military rather than a political sense.

“When you have enemies rather than political opponents, there is no possible peaceful resolution of the crisis,” he said.

In his assessment, citizens who have been protesting for months are not presented in the government’s public discourse as a political option or part of the opposition, but as a security threat to be neutralized, which, he adds, creates grounds for delegitimizing whatever might happen on election night.

Bandovic’s closing assessment reaches beyond a single incident in a single city. He says the country is in a deep political crisis, that the security situation for Serbia’s citizens is unfavorable, and that many freedoms are under threat. In his view, the outcome of the upcoming elections points toward one of two directions, a democratic turnaround or an autocratic consolidation, which he compares to Turkey or Georgia.

Neither N1 nor Nova, the sources this article draws on, has so far reported any response from the Serbian Progressive Party to Bandovic’s assessment.