Sawt Falasteen - Serbian ruling party hails election win amid calls for protest

According to the initial results, Vucic's right wing Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) won 127 out of the 250 seats in parliament.

"My job was to do everything in my power to secure an absolute majority in the parliament," Vucic told reporters as he celebrated what he said was the SNS's victory late Sunday.

Even though Vucic was not personally on the ballot during the parliamentary and local elections over the weekend, the contest was largely seen as a referendum on his government.

To his supporters, Vucic's decade in power has brought stability and billions in investments to the once chaotic country ravaged by a string of wars in the former Yugoslavia and bouts of hyperinflation in the 1990s.

"I want Serbia to continue on the same path. It seems that this path is the most reasonable for the greatest number of people, whether rich or poor," Svetlana Nikolic, a 70-year-old Vucic supporter in Belgrade, told AFP.

Vucic has been particularly deft at balancing ties between east and west, vowing to keep Serbia on a course for European Union membership -- while also remaining friendly with Russia and courting China and Washington.

On Monday, Moscow congratulated Vucic and the SNS on their victory, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying he hoped the win would lead to the "further strengthening of friendship" between the countries.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban also praised Vucic, calling the win an "overwhelming election victory".

The SNS also said it secured a win in municipal elections in the capital Belgrade, where the party faced their stiffest challenge from a loose coalition of opposition parties and candidates running under the Serbia Against Violence banner.

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

The movement vowed to take to the streets again, calling for supporters to rally on Monday night against what the group called "electoral theft" during the local elections in the capital.

The coalition alleged that over 40,000 people voted in Belgrade who were not formally registered as residents, arguing that the government allowed unregistered voters from neighbouring Bosnia to cast ballots illegally in the election.

The government has dismissed the claims, with Prime Minister Ana Brnabic saying the allegations were designed to spread chaos.

A team of international observers that monitored the polls were set to hold a press conference at 3:00 pm local time (1400 GMT) to discuss the elections.

N.AbuHussein--SF-PST