Serbia poll fails again - monitors
Sunday, November 16, 2003 Posted: 2043 GMT ( 4:43 AM HKT)
BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro -- Serbia has failed for a third time in just over a year to elect a new president as voter turnout fell far short of the 50 percent required, figures provided by independent monitors showed.
The non-governmental Centre for Free Elections and Democracy (CESID) told Reuters they estimated final turnout at 38.3 percent of the 6.5 million electorate.
Two attempts to elect a head of state failed last year because turnout failed to make the 50 percent necessary to validate it.
In a surprise development, it predicted that nationalist hardliner Tomoslav Nikolic won more votes than the candidate of the reformist DOS bloc, Dragoljub Micunovic. CESID said Nikolic received about 1.16 million votes against 873,000 for Micunovic.
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http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/11/16/serbia.results/index.html