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Pro-EU party wins Serbian elections: preliminary results

Xinhua, April 25, 2016 Adjust font size:

Serbia's ruling Progressive Party won Sunday's parliamentary elections, securing another four years for its leader to push for Serbia's bid to join the European Union.

Winning 49.3 percent of votes, Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, the party leader, said that "the result is extraordinary, the best in the history of multi-party system" in Serbia.

According to the Republic Electoral Commission, the Socialist Party, a smaller partner in the ruling coalition, won 12.1 percent of votes.

The elections, on Vucic's initiative, were held two years before his term ends to test people's devotion to reforms related to the process of EU membership negotiation that formally started last December.

Vucic said that his party won more votes than those at 2014 elections "when it started conducting tough (EU-related) reforms."

"We will work hard ... and we will continue our European path. We will try to make it faster. There will be no compromise over this issue," he said.

Vucic also announced that Serbia will have a GDP growth of 2 percent this year, 3 percent next year and 4 percent by 2018, which will help the country get closer to the EU standard.

Final results of the elections will be announced in the following days by the Republic Electoral Commission, a parliamentary body in charge of organizing elections, after which the parliament will be reinstalled within 30 days and a new government will be formed within another 90 days.

According to the Center for Free Elections and Democracy, an hour before the closure of polling stations, the turnout was around 52 percent of the 6.7 million voters. Endi