Sawt Falasteen - Inflation-hit Serbia heads to polls after months of protests

After more than a decade in power, Vucic's right-wing populist Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) looks likely to extend its rule, according to polls, despite hard-fought municipal races in the capital Belgrade.

Serbians have been battered by rising prices, with inflation hitting roughly 12 percent.

"The situation in the country is not ideal... I know your life is hard, that you have problems," Vucic told supporters at a campaign rally last week.

To blunt the hard edges of inflation ahead of elections, he unleashed a torrent of state spending -- boosting pensions and handing out cash to the elderly.

The policies appear to be paying off, with the SNS forecast to secure at least 40 percent of the vote, which would pave the way for victory for Vucic and his allies.

Vucic's SNS faces the toughest competition from a loose coalition of opposition parties and candidates running under the "Serbia Against Violence" banner.

The movement was formed in the wake of back-to-back mass shootings earlier this year that spurred hundreds of thousands to take to the streets. The rallies quickly morphed into anti-government protests that lasted months.

According to Vladimir Pejic of the Faktor Plus polling institute, more voters are undecided before Sunday's poll than in the past.

"We have for the first time after a series of election cycles another larger political force apart from SNS -- Serbia Against Violence," Pejic told the Danas newspaper.

- 'House of cards' -

But even Vucic's staunchest opponents are not expecting any sweeping change.

"The first step is, I hope, [for wins] in Belgrade, and perhaps some other cities," Dragica Pajic, a 55-year-old engineer, told AFP during an opposition rally in the capital on Tuesday. "And then this house of cards will start to tumble."

While Vucic is not on the ballot, the strongman president remains everywhere in the run-up to the vote -- plastered on billboards and skyscrapers and the focus of wall-to-wall coverage on news channels.

In a video shared on social media that quickly went viral, Vucic and some of his ministers were seen enjoying a 585-dinar ($5.40) feast of sausage meat, yoghurt and bread, highlighting their efforts to keep prices low.

The video was widely panned by his opponents as a cheap publicity stunt.

Vucic has repeatedly dismissed his critics and the months of protests as a foreign plot, warning that Serbia would be directionless without his leadership.

"It's not about me leaving power, but about them destroying everything," he told supporters at a recent rally.

"It would take us 20 years to fix everything... That's why we'll beat them more convincingly than ever."

Vucic has used his more than a decade in power to tighten his grip on the levers of power, including de facto control over the press.

He called the snap elections in November, the latest example of how governments under his rule rarely serve out their full term -- a move critics say is designed to keep the opposition off balance.

S.Abdullah--SF-PST