Serbian Presidential Elections Fail Due to Insufficient Voter Turnout

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, October 14, 2002

Serbian Presidential Elections Fail Due to Insufficient Voter Turnout

Serbia's first post-Milosevic presidential elections failed on Sunday because of the insufficient voter turnout.

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Serbia's first post-Milosevic presidential elections failed on Sunday because of the insufficient voter turnout.

Only some 45.9 percent of the country's 6.5 million eligible voters cast their ballots, less than the legal minimum of 50 percent, invalidating the poll, said officials of the Center for Free Elections and Democracy.

Some 66 percent of the vote went to current Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, and 31 percent to deputy Yugoslav Prime Minister Miroljub Labus.

Kostunica and Labus came out ahead of nine other candidates in the first round of the elections on September 29, winning 30.89 percent and 27.36 percent of the vote respectively. They had urged voters to participate in the elections so that Serbia could stick to the road to economic recovery and European integration, but the nationalist Serb Radical Party had called on its supporters to boycott the run-off.

Those who boycotted the run-off vote feel disappointed at the current economic situation -- soaring prices and staggering unemployment, analysts said.

Both Kostunica and Labus engaged in the campaign to oust Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav President, two years ago. Milosevic was handed over to the UN war crimes court in The Hague in June 2001 and is now standing trial for alleged atrocities.

Incumbent Serbian President Milan Milutinovic's term expires at the end of this year. Under Serbia's law, if on one has been elected by the time Milutinovic leaves office, parliament speaker Natasa Micic would take up the interim presidency.

Yugoslavia is a federation made up of two republics -- Serbia and Montenegro. The country is in the process of being turned into a loose union, according to a plan supported by the European Union. If the plan is realized, Kostunica will lose his position later this year.

The country will have to hold fresh elections, probably in January next year.

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