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| - Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic was poised to cement his centre-right party's grip on power Sunday in Europe's first national election since emerging from coronavirus lockdown, with a scattered opposition helping clear the path to victory. The powerful leader did not run for parliament himself but fronted the campaign as chief of his ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) with the slogan: "Aleksandar Vucic - For Our Children". The party was tipped to garner more than 50 percent of the vote according to surveys taken before the polls opened, thanks to a weak opposition and the government's perceived successes in fighting the coronavirus outbreak. While a slate of small opposition parties joined the race, the main camp boycotted the election to decry democratic backsliding under Vucic, who critics accuse of budding authoritarianism. Amid the stay-at-home campaign and lingering virus fears, turnout was down, but not dramatically. An hour before polls closed, turnout hovered at 45.5 percent, according to independent election monitor CRTA, around seven points lower than in the last parliamentary elections in 2016. Jelena Djikanovic, a 39-year-old casting her ballot in Belgrade, said she was eager for change but was not sympathetic to the boycott movement. "I think it is not acceptable to surrender without a fight," she told AFP. Casting his own vote, Vucic said he was satisfied with the "democratic atmosphere" and that he expected a "good turnout." "I hope for a success, I hope for a good result," he added. A win for Vucic would be another feather in the cap for a leader who has expanded his power base over the past eight years, serving twice as prime minister before becoming president. In recent weeks, he has been riding a fresh wave of popularity for keeping Serbia's coronavirus situation under control, with around 260 deaths in a country of seven million. Although the post of president is meant to be ceremonial, he remains Serbia's top decision-maker and exercises outsized influence over parliament and state institutions. According to analyst Dusan Spasojevic, Vucic's increasingly "authoritarian" grip means "Serbia does not meet minimal conditions for elective democracy". "I use the term competitive autocracy -- when there is a competition but participants are not equal," he said. Watchdogs accuse Vucic of warping the media landscape in his favour and exploiting votes from a large base of public sector employees and their relatives. The US-based Freedom House recently branded the country a "hybrid regime" instead of a democracy because of Vucic's strongman tactics. But the Serb leader can count on support from key allies on the international stage. In addition to close ties with Russia and China, he has backing from the West, where he is seen as capable of resolving Serbia's decades-long territorial dispute with former province Kosovo. After elections, the president will be under pressure to make progress on talks with Pristina that have been frozen for over a year. Over the next week he will meet the European Union's envoy for Serbia and Kosovo, visit Moscow and finally meet with Kosovo representatives at the White House. At the heart of the dispute is Belgrade's rejection of the independence that Kosovo, home to an ethnic Albanian majority, declared after their bloody 1990s war that was halted by a NATO intervention. After voting on Sunday Vucic warned of "difficult days and weeks ahead of us, in particularly related to Kosovo." Ballots were also cast across the former Serbian province, where significant Serb minority remains. In the northern city of Mitrovica, 57-year-old Zoran Milentijevic said he was voting for the president. "To give him more chance to end (talks) with Pristina, to reach some agreement." burs-ssm/wai
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