Vucic: Some Election Laws Senseless, Passed for Cluster 3
The lead candidate of the United Serbia list tells Politika that parliament erred on laws passed to open EU clusters, and that some of them concern election legislation.
Aleksandar Vucic, who heads the United Serbia election list and is its candidate for prime minister, said in an interview for today’s edition of the daily Politika, published on October 22, that the National Assembly made mistakes when it passed many of the laws needed to open clusters in negotiations with the European Union. According to him, some of those laws are senseless and concern election legislation. The statement comes three days before the elections scheduled for October 25.
N1 and Danas carried the interview, and the statements below come from their reports.
What did Vucic say about the laws and Cluster 3?
Vucic said parliament erred during the period when he was president of the Republic. These were laws that, as he put it, were needed to open clusters, the groups of chapters in Serbia’s negotiations with Brussels. He says he accepted the changes when pro-European people told him they would open Cluster 3, and that he is not hiding it:
“Some are even senseless, they concern election legislation, but I did it at one point, I won’t hide that at all, when pro-European people told me, here, Mr. President, we will now do three or four things and Cluster 3 will open for us,” Vucic said.
In the parts of the interview that have been reported, he does not specify which election laws he means, or who the people he refers to are.
What did he say ahead of the October 25 vote?
The second part of the interview is about the vote itself. Vucic said the will of citizens at the October 25 elections will be protected “at any cost,” and that in Serbia foreign embassies will not decide, citizens will. On the campaign of the United Serbia list, he said the following:
“We presented citizens with clear positions on all issues of national interest, concrete programs for every area, and reminded them of everything we have done together with them so far, and it is up to them to think carefully about whom to entrust their own future and the future of the state to,” Vucic told Politika.
In the N1 and Danas reports, the message about embassies comes in the first sentence, while the statement about the laws from the same interview is reported later. These are two separate questions: one is about who may influence the outcome of the vote, the other about the rules under which people vote.
What is known about reactions from others?
The N1 and Danas reports contain no reaction from the opposition or the European Union to this statement, so it is not possible to say how it was received. Danas also writes the same day about the election silence, which that newsroom says begins at midnight, meaning the last days before the vote will take place under campaign restrictions.
Voting is set for October 25, and Vucic said in the same interview that he considers part of the election laws under which it is held to be senseless, and that he accepted the changes because of Cluster 3.
