Serbian independent watchdogs are sounding the alarm ahead of Sunday's local elections, warning that the ruling party has transformed small municipal races into a heavily funded national battleground plagued by massive, opaque spending and the deployment of American ultra-right “phantom” election monitors.
Fewer than 250,000 voters across 10 municipalities will head to the polls this weekend. Yet, for President Aleksandar Vučić and his ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), the stakes extend far beyond local governance.
Vučić recently headlined a massive pre-election rally in Belgrade, effectively turning Sunday’s vote into a dress rehearsal for national polls expected by 2027, amid ongoing student protests demanding snap elections.
Against this tense backdrop, the SNS is pouring vast resources into small towns like Aranđelovac and Majdanpek. According to preliminary reports analyzed by the watchdog group Transparency Serbia, Transparentnost, the ruling party transferred 35.2 million dinars ($344,982) from its main account specifically to bankroll its local campaigns, alongside an 11.8 million dinar ($115,647) advance for national television ads.
This partisan financial muscle dwarfs the 10 municipalities’ combined public campaign subsidy of just 10.7 million dinars ($104,859).
The official figures only show a fraction of the real money at play. Nemanja Nenadić, program director at Transparency Serbia, told OCCRP that the exact amount spent is unknown because “only a small part of the money passes through legal channels.”
“There are very serious suspicions that a significant part of the campaign is not financed in any way that complies with the law,” said Nemanja Nenadić, program director for Transparency Serbia. He dismissed the preliminary financial reports as “quite useless” for omitting the final weeks of the race and hiding unpaid debts. Instead, he noted, the true costs are quietly buried in public budgets and the misuse of state personnel.
Yet, the most alarming anomaly of Sunday’s vote will likely unfold inside the polling stations. The electoral landscape has been flooded with foreign observers. In the lead-up to the vote, Serbian authorities rapidly approved monitoring missions from three U.S. organizations tied to the MAGA movement of President Donald Trump, including the America First Policy Institute.
“The appearance of foreign quasi-observers is a step further in destroying the integrity of the elections,” Raša Nedeljkov, program director at the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA), told OCCRP. Instead of observing neutrally, he said, they act as “supervisors” for ruling party polling chiefs, even utilizing an SNS lawmaker as a translator.
This strategy directly mirrors a playbook used during local elections in Georgia last October. With independent watchdogs crippled by the state, Georgia brought in a network of 29 foreign “fake observers,” according to the European Platform for Democratic Elections.
That network included right-wing American operatives Jake Hoffman, an executive with the Florida Young Republicans, and Jay Patel. Both men, affiliated with the Hungary-based Center for Fundamental Rights, publicly praised Georgia’s heavily criticized elections. Now, local media reports indicate Hoffman and Patel are slated to monitor Sunday’s vote in Serbia.
State-aligned organizations are aggressively defending the American presence. The Center for Social Stability (CZDS) confirmed its partnership with the America First Policy Institute. Bizarrely tying Balkan municipal races to American culture wars, CZDS claimed that criticism of the monitors was an attack on “patriotism, tradition, a healthy family and sovereignty.” The group explicitly referenced conservative U.S. activist Charlie Kirk and past efforts to build a “Trump Tower” in Belgrade.
The manipulation appears to extend to the ballots themselves. Of the 50 registered electoral lists, CRTA suspects 19 are “phantom” groups deliberately designed to confuse voters and dilute genuine opposition.
The ruling party, however, routinely dismisses allegations of financial and electoral malpractice. Responding to recent undercover media reports that the SNS paid citizens to attend Vučić’s Belgrade rally, Parliament Speaker and party top official Ana Brnabić called the accusations “nonsense..” As reported by the Tanjug news agency, Brnabić also lashed out at CRTA, labeling the watchdog’s previous reports of electoral coercion as “monstrosities.”
These heavy-handed tactics echo recent history. The Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia (CINS) reported that during November 2025 local elections in several other municipalities, the ruling party spent triple the amount of previous cycles. Those elections were marred by severe violence, with masked men and unmarked cars terrorizing polling stations in full view of the police.
