Serbia against Violence electoral list held its first convention yesterday in Belgrade ahead of the December 17th elections, at which the election candidates spoke, including the main candidate Dobrica Veselinović and the list’s candidate for Belgrade mayor, Vladimir Obradović.
Veselinović referred to the May mass shootings in Serbia and how they influenced the formation of this coalition. He noted that there are differences within the coalition, but that they have a common goal, which is to win the elections with their anti-violence and anti-corruption policies.
“The fight for a better Serbia will never end,” said Veselinović and invited voters not to abstain because “we can only win together”.
At the beginning of his speech, the Belgrade mayor candidate, Vladimir Obradović, said that he was confident that the Serbia against Violence was poised to win.
“We live on the edge of violence and unfortunately that edge has often been crossed. I wonder how we got here and what we did wrong. The answer is simple but painful to hear – Belgrade is governed by people who don’t like it,” Obradović said.
Obradović appealed to the citizens to talk to people in their surroundings and convince them to vote so that the turnout would be as high as possible.
Miloš Pavlović, a candidate for councillor in the Belgrade Assembly and vice-president of the National Movement of Serbia, said that there would be money for new buses, transport infrastructure and the development of the city according to the needs of its citizens when corruption is eradicated from Belgrade.
“We also need to stop corruption and that implies raising the question of political responsibility by determining the origin of the assets of all mayors since 2014,” he said, adding that since 2014, Belgrade has been governed by three mayors, two of whom have fake university diplomas.
Pavlović also said that 60 percent of the money from the budget is used to pay civil servants from the ranks of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and that Belgrade ranks third on the list of the most polluted capitals in the world.
Member of the Green-Left Front, Natalija Stojmenović, assessed that the Serbia against Violence coalition was born from “cries and enormous pain after the tragic events in May”.
“We don’t want to live in a city where the air that we breathe kills or where violence against our fellow citizens happens every day,” said Stojmenović.
(Danas, 17.11.2023)
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