After his landslide victory in Sunday’s (2 April) presidential election, Serbian prime minister Aleksandar Vucic is the strongman of the Western Balkans now more than ever.
He won 55 percent of the vote and effectively obliterated 11 other candidates – the strongest of whom barely managed to get 13 percent.
Until he moves to his new office by the end of this month, Vucic will be wearing two hats: the prime minister and the president-elect, at the same time.
Nothing could mar Vucic’s victory – neither the fact that Serbia has now hit the lowest score on Freedom House’s Democracy Index since 2003, nor the thousands of protesters who took to the streets of Belgrade on Monday evening to claim that the elections were rigged.
Even while riot police were dispersing the crowd, congratulatory letters were pouring in from all over the world.
European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and German chancellor Angela Merkel were among the first to hail Vucic’s success, but best wishes also came from Russian president Vladimir Putin, Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the EU’s bad boy, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban.
