Zukorlic Wins a Seat, Crta Flags Suspected Vote Buying

Usama Zukorlic’s list, led by the president of the Party of Justice and Reconciliation (SPP), cleared the threshold for minority lists in the November 1 rerun and, according to Crta’s projection, wins one parliamentary seat. The Student List therefore has 140 deputies in the new Assembly instead of 141. Crta says only 12 votes decided that seat, and the Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Aleksinac has opened a case over giving and taking bribes in connection with the vote in that town.

The Republic Electoral Commission (RIK) published results from all 8,392 polling stations on its website on November 2. It has yet to issue the formal allocation of seats in a ruling. We followed the start of the rerun, at seven in the morning, as it happened.

What was rerun, and why?

On Sunday, November 1, voting was repeated at 53 polling stations in 24 towns and municipalities, with 24,438 registered voters. At 31 of them, the results of the snap parliamentary elections of October 25 could not be established, and at 22 the vote was annulled by the competent electoral commissions. Voters went back to the polls in Aleksinac, Novi Pazar, Pirot, Pozarevac, Subotica, Zemun, Kursumlija and Vladicin Han, among other places.

Turnout at those stations, according to Crta, was 9.4 percent by 10 a.m., 35 percent by 4 p.m. and 43.6 percent by 7 p.m., finishing at 44.9 percent. The polls closed at 8 p.m.

The rerun did not change the winner. The Student List, “Students Win,” has 53.01 percent, or 2,354,417 votes, and the “Aleksandar Vucic - United Serbia” list has 38.98 percent, or 1,731,323 votes. The gap is 623,094 votes, with overall turnout of 68.89 percent (4,444,310 voters). At the 53 stations alone, the preliminary tally looked different: United Serbia 4,769 votes (43.4 percent), the Student List 4,638 (42.3 percent).

How did the SPP get its seat?

After the October 25 vote, the “Usama Zukorlic (SPP) - Movement for Unification” list was, according to earlier figures reported by Danas and Kurir, fewer than 200 votes short. RIK member David Krstic told N1 during the rerun:

“If the Party of Justice and Reconciliation of Mr. Zukorlic gets a result of 219 votes, provided that the other results also line up, it can enter parliament and win that one seat.”

Zukorlic told a press conference that the list had won more than 300 votes at the rerun stations. He gave his total this way: “That means that right now we have 12,500 votes, which gives us a seat.” According to RIK data from all polling stations, the list has 0.28 percent of the vote. Without the votes from the 53 rerun stations, the Student List would have 141 seats and the SPP none.

On X, Zukorlic wrote:

“Thank you to everyone who came out to vote today, who brought their family and neighbors, and who believed until the last minute. The Movement for Unification is entering the Assembly of Serbia, and Sandzak will have a stronger parliamentary voice. We will keep fighting steadily for equality, for development, for jobs and for the future of our people, both in Sandzak and across Serbia. Fewer divisions, more results is the pledge I carry into the Assembly.”

Zukorlic is also a minister without portfolio in the caretaker Serbian government, in charge of reconciliation, regional cooperation and social stability.

What do the Aleksinac polling stations show?

The biggest jump came at polling station 74 in Aleksinac. There the SPP had zero votes on October 25 and 53 on November 1. At the same station, the list around the SNS got 109 votes, the Student List 61 and the SPS one. The other two Bosniak lists got none. Across Aleksinac, the SPP has 71 votes, the “Rasim Ljajic - Ljudski” list 22 and the SDA of Sandzak one, according to RIK data from November 2 cited by BBC News in Serbian. In the 2022 census, only eight people in Aleksinac declared themselves Bosniaks, and the town is 220 kilometers from Novi Pazar.

Similar jumps were recorded elsewhere. At one polling station in Loznica the SPP went from zero votes to 26, and at station 33 in Pirot (the “Sveti Sava” primary school) from zero to 17. At station 81 in the Ukras neighborhood of Novi Pazar, where voting was repeated because a control ballot was lost in transport to the City Electoral Commission, 766 of 1,838 registered voters cast ballots (41.7 percent). The Ljajic list received 214 votes, the SDA of Sandzak 210, the SPP 176, the Student List 108 and United Serbia 48.

Crta said that one of the reasons for concern was an attempt to buy votes for the SPP list at a polling station in Aleksinac. The organization stated:

“Given that only 12 votes decided that Zukorlic’s list wins a seat, the recorded allegations of vote buying in favor of that list are an additional cause for concern.”

The prosecutor’s office in Aleksinac passed the case to the Special Anti-Corruption Department of the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Nis. The offense carries a sentence of up to three years in prison, or up to five if it was committed by a member of a polling board. Krstic told N1 that suspicion of vote buying exists in Majdanpek as well.

How does the SPP respond?

The SPP told BBC News in Serbian that it learned of the vote-buying allegations from the media. Edin Numanovic, the party’s vice president and second on the list, said in a written response:

“If anyone from the SPP took part in that, they will be strictly sanctioned. But in any case, the votes from Aleksinac were not decisive for us to win a seat in the Assembly of Serbia.”

He explained the better result by fieldwork: committees from across Serbia, led by the one in Nis, campaigned in Aleksinac for four days, and a significant number of votes were secured by Novi Pazar businesspeople through their business associates. He added that lists that did not clear the threshold also backed the rerun.

Crta also reported a UV lamp used incorrectly more than once at several stations in Novi Pazar and Majdanpek, inconsistent identification of voters in Vladicin Han, parallel voter records, and third parties at polling stations and outside them.

Who has how many seats?

Sources disagree on the exact allocation of minority seats. According to figures that BBC News in Serbian attributes to Crta, the split is:

• Student List: 140
• “Aleksandar Vucic - United Serbia”: 103
• Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians and the Albanian Coalition: 2 each
• “Rasim Ljajic - Ljudski (SDP-CDP)”, the SDA of Sandzak and the SPP: 1 each

That adds up to 250 seats, the size of the Assembly. Danas writes that the remaining seven seats belong to minority lists, which matches that total if the SPP is counted among them. Novosti, citing Crta, reports two seats each for the Ljajic list and the SDA of Sandzak. On that count, 140, 103 and two seats for each of four minority lists would make 251, and 252 with the SPP seat, more than 250. The allocation therefore has to be confirmed by the RIK.

What deadlines come next?

Under the Law on the Election of Members of Parliament, the RIK has 96 hours from receiving all summary reports to publish the overall report, and then 10 days to allocate seats by ruling. The first session of the Assembly is convened by the speaker of the previous convocation, no later than 30 days after the results are declared, and a government must be formed within 90 days of the Assembly’s constitution. Krstic said the overall results could be ready in seven to 10 days, if the vote is not repeated again: “I sincerely hope that it will not come to a repeat of the election.”