Amid voter apathy that doomed two previous efforts, Serbians voted for a president yesterday for the third time in a year. Failure this time could leave the republic politically hamstrung.
Dragoljub Micunovic, a veteran politician with strong democratic credentials backed by the governing Democrats and their allies, was leading pre-election polls against five other candidates.
His main rival, Tomislav Nikolic, an ultranationalist with ties to Slobodan Milosevic, is hoping that disillusionment with the democracy will help his cause.
The last two elections foundered because turnout was below the 50 percent minimum, and polls indicate possible failure again yesterday due to opposition calls for a boycott and apathy among the 6.5 million eligible voters.
A failure of Sunday's vote would create a major political crisis.
Parliament was dissolved last week and early general elections were set for Dec. 28. If yesterday's elections failed, there would be no one to call a new vote because that task usually falls to the speaker of the now dissolved parliament.
Even if yesterday's turnout passed the legal threshold, no candidate is likely to win outright by collecting at least 50 percent of votes cast. A runoff would be held in two weeks -- Nov. 30.
Polls opened at 7am and were to close 13 hours later. An independent observer group was expected to release early results late last night; the first official results were expected today.
Serbia and the much smaller republic of Montenegro form Serbia-Montenegro, which replaced Yugoslavia after it broke apart following a decade of war.
There are no more armed conflicts in the region, but the threat of instability remains.
In March, Serbia's first post-Milosevic prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, also the republic's first democratic leader since World War II, was assassinated, allegedly by crime bosses and Milosevic-era paramilitary commanders.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
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Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia