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Political Parties

There is very low trust among voters in political parties and politicians. Only 20 percent of the population actually trusts the parties and politicians. Basically the Serbian population doesn't trust anybody anymore.

The structure of Parliament is a significant factor in the oftentimes juvenile behavior of its members. MPs are chosen through a country-wide party list system, and the lists are not transparent before the elections; this means that members depend entirely on the goodwill of party leaders to obtain and retain their seats in Parliament, and voters have no way to vote out an individual who does not produce results. This subservience to party leadership is compounded by the practice of having MPs sign blank letters of resignation at the start of their terms, which party leaders use to ensure that members vote the party line. The result is an absolute lack of accountability of members of Parliament to any electoral constituency.

Perhaps the chief criticism of the election process was the obvious gap between the voter’s choice and the actual selection of the person who ultimately takes a parliamentary seat. The Serbian voter chooses a political party or coalition on the election list, but, once it is determined how many seats a particular party/coalition gets, the party leadership then has ten days in which to select which of the 250 persons on its submitted party list actually take a seat. This method of selecting parliamentarians has been criticized for lacking transparency and effectively concentrating attention not on specific candidates and their views or abilities but on the political party leaders who retain control over their members. This leadership control may be further strengthened by requiring deputies to sign undated letters of resignation which can be used to remove them if they fail to observe party discipline.

One of the main reasons for the Parliament's inefficiency was the ruling coalition's narrow majority of 129 deputies (out of 250), who belong to 18 different political parties and groups. The government and parliamentary leadership had a difficult time satisfying the diverse interests of all coalition partners. The opposition, composed of experienced MPs from the SRS, the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) of former Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, Tomislav Nikolic's Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) which split from the SRS in October 2008, and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), uses every opportunity to extract concessions in return for support. For example, Cedomir Jovanovic's LDP stepped in to provide a quorum when four Hungarian MPs from the governing coalition refused to support a key piece of judicial reform legislation, prompting immediate press speculation that LDP had received something in return.

On 21 January 2007, Serbia held elections for the 250-seat parliament, the National Assembly. World reaction to the results focused heavily on the continued support among the Serbian electorate for the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) led by indicted war criminal Vojislav Seselj, which garnered 28.7 percent of the vote, up from 27.6 percent in the last elections in 2003. That, of course, rightly leads to concern about Serbia’s inability to reject the extreme nationalism fostered by the Milosevic regime throughout the 1990s. On the other hand, the Democratic Party (DS) of President Boris Tadic came in second with 22.9 percent of the vote, an increase from 12.6 percent in 2003 and an indication that entrenched nationalist sentiments have not negated strong support for democratic development and integration.

The coalition led by the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica gained only 16.7 percent of the vote, compared to 17.7 percent in 2003. The DSS, which bridges the nationalist/democratic divide in Serbian politics, appears to be replaced by the DS as the leading reform-oriented party in Serbia. G17-Plus, which has focused heavily on economic reform, saw its percentage of support drop but retained enough for parliamentary representation, as did the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), once led by Slobodan Milosevic. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), a newer party led by Cedomir Jovanovic which more completely than any other rejects the Milosevic legacy, crossed the 5 percent threshold by leading a coalitions of like-minded parties. The Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) of Vuk Draskovic, which traditionally featured prominently in Serbia’s multi-party political history, did not. One Hungarian and two Romani parties, along with the Bosniak and the Albanian coalition, won one or more seats in the National Assembly.

Twenty years after the introduction of a multi-party political system, the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia on 12 May 2009 adopted a new Law on Political Parties. The main objectives of the new Law on Political Parties are to allow freedom of political association as guaranteed by the Constitution, and to tighten the conditions for the establishment of political parties.

For comprehensive reform of the political system, the Serbian authorities needed to adopt six additional laws: a law on local elections, a law on single voter registry, a law on the state electoral commission, a law on political party financing, a law on the election of representatives, and a law on presidential elections. While there was reportedly consensus among parties on the need for the laws on local elections and the single voter registry, and drafts were ready for adoption by the government, the other laws faced serious technical and political problems and their adoption was uncertain.

According to the provisions of the new Law on Political Parties, the number of valid signatures of citizens required to register a party will increase from 100 to 10,000. This provision remove most of the more than 600 currently registered but small and inactive political parties. An exception exists for parties of national minorities, which require only 1,000 signatures to be established. The new law also abolishes the requirement for parties to collect 10,000 signatures in order to participate in elections, which simplified the electoral process.

The new law required all political parties to re-register within six months after the law goes into force on July 20. This provision forced all political parties to hold party conventions or congresses by the end of the year in order to harmonize their party programs and statutes with the law. Additionally, parties were obligated to publish on the internet all documents related to the parties' establishment (founding act, program, statute and other by-laws), a measure designed to increase the transparency of party operations.

In order to determine which parties are truly active, the law required parties to re-register every eight years unless during that period they win mandates in either the national or provincial parliaments. Finally, the law gave the Constitutional Court exclusive jurisdiction to evaluate whether a party should be banned. (This provision harmonized Serbia's legislation with Article 5 of the 2006 Constitution, which prohibited actions by political parties that are directed toward the destruction of the constitutional order; violate human and minority rights; or provoke racial, national, or religious hatred.)

The adoption of the new Law on Political Parties produced surprisingly little public commentary. The only criticism during parliamentary debate came from the Liberal Democratic Party, which viewed the registration requirements as too restrictive. Most interested observers concur that the law represents a much-needed step to improve the transparency, seriousness, and efficiency of the Serbian political system while still ensuring the full participation of national minorities.

In the wake of the recently-adopted Law on Political Parties requiring all parties to re-register after July 20, Sandzak Democratic Party (SDP) President Rasim Ljajic announced in local press interviews on July 19 that he planned to form a new social democratic party this fall to occupy the space on the center-left of the political spectrum. After the SDP's successful showing in municipal elections in Zemun and Vozdovac as a minority party, Ljajic voiced confidence that SDP also had the capacity to compete on the national level. Ljajic said the party would be "profiled as social democratic," which he meant as being founded on the four principles of freedom, justice, equality, and solidarity.

On the right, local political movements started unifying in the spring of 2009 around issues of decentralization and development, and are positioned to fall under a new tentatively-titled "Party of Regions" to be led by G17 Plus president Mladjan Dinkic. In May, the popular mayor of Kragujevac, Veroljub Stevanovic, united over a dozen local "Together For" movements in over a dozen Central Serbian municipalities to create a national party "Together for Sumadija" based on principles of devolving political power from Belgrade and free market economic policy. In early June, Dinkic began floating trial balloons as to prospects for a new "Party of Regions" under his leadership to be based on similar themes as Stevanovic's "Together for Sumadija" as well as the idea of dividing Serbia into seven administrative regions. Various media outlets speculated that Dinkic's Party of Regions would unify G17 Plus with Stevanovic's party, the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) led by Minister Suleyman Ugljanin, the "I Live for Zajecar" Party led by Zajecar Mayor Bosko Nicic, and the Coalition for Pirot led by Pirot Mayor Vladan Vasic.