Serb Far-Right Group Prepares Poll Debut
By Bojana Barlovac
One of Serbia’s better known far-right organisations, Dveri, has announced it will compete in next spring’s election on a pro-family values ticket.
“Finally there is someone I can vote for,” is the slogan of the Serbian far-right organisation “Dveri”, [Doors], which for the first time has decided to take part in a general election.
Vladan Glisic, a leader of Dveri, says the decision to take part in the spring 2012 election reflects an urgent need to change the system and its values after 20 years of “wrong regimes”.
“We want to change the system and regime completely,” he told Balkan Insight, starting with a renewed emphasis on “family values”.
The groups intents to put the family in first place and so create a more “pro-life” oriented society.
“Our goal is to strengthen the state to become a home of the people, which will exist to protect people from beaurocratic arbitrariness and oligarchy,” Glisic explained.
Dveri is known for a lot more than family values and hostility to gay rights and abortion.
One of the plethora of far-right groups in Serbia, it has a pronounced nationalist ideology, and it firmly opposed government plans to ease tensions with neighbouring Bosnia by adopting a resolution condemning the massacre committed by the Bosnian Serb army in Srebrenica, eastern Bosnia, in 1995.
Parliament passed the resolution in March 2010.
It is equally trenchant on the subject of independence for mainly Albanian Kosovo.
Meanwhile, true to its anti-gay agenda, Dveri has said it will organise a rival pro-family march if and when a Gay Pride parade takes place in Belgrade this autumn.
Branimir Nesic, of Dveri, said the government will bear responsibility if there are anti-gay clashes on Belgrade’s streets. Last October’s parade, the first since 20001, ended in violent clashes between stone-throwing anti-gay youths and the police.
Turning to the elections, Dveri says it has no links to any political parties.
“We are not only anti-regime but also an anti-system party and not a single opposition party has shown any interest in fighting against the [existing] system so far,” Glisic claimed.
Although Dveri’s members are strong supporters of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Dveri says it will not seek any official support from that quarter, either.
“Our members’ relationship with the Church is their private matter”, Glisic said. Ordinary people are the only ones on whose support Dveri counts.
Months ahead of the election, analysts are reluctant to estimate the potential impact of groups like Dveri.
Political analyst Djordje Vukovic said he believed that Dveri might steal a number of votes from established right-wing parties, such as the Democratic Party of Serbia, DSS, and Serbian Radical Party, SRS.
But he downplayed talk of a far-right breakthrough in the election. “I do not expect it to register a serious result [in the poll],” Vukovic said.
