Day after Aleksandar Vučić’s populist ruling party declared victory, concerns raised over vote-buying and ballot box stuffing. This live blog is closed
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has arrived in Budapest to meet Hungary’s leadership.
The relationship between Turkey and Hungary is closely watched in the west, in part because the two countries have been delaying Sweden’s accession to Nato.
One thing that is significant is the level of irregularities that was noticed … we’ll need to get a full investigation, but the large numbers of voters which were apparently bused to Belgrade, to vote especially in the local elections, is something we haven’t seen on that scale before.
And that suggests a very systematic effort of the government to ensure it gets a majority in Belgrade. So this is something which is certainly noteworthy. I mean, there’s been manipulation in the past but this seems to be more serious.
Even if it’s not clear that the opposition will be strong enough to actually be able to form a government, but at least it suggests that there’s a genuine weakness in Belgrade.
I think nobody doubted that they would win the elections, but nobody expected that they would improve on the result of last year by such a margin.
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