Conservative Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic is runaway favorite to win Sunday's Serbian presidential elections despite opposition warnings about the extent of his domination over the Balkan country, balanced between the West and Russia, Reuters reported.
Most polls see Vucic, 47, winning in the first round with more than 50 percent of the vote, trailed in the low teens by a former rights advocate and a white-suited student whose satirical portrayal of a sleazy political fraudster has struck a chord with some disillusioned voters.
The role of president is largely ceremonial, but Vucic is expected to retain real power through his control of Serbia's ruling Progressive Party.
As such, the election is unlikely to alter the country's delicate balancing act between the European Union, which Vucic wants Serbia to join, and Russia, with which Serbs share their Orthodox Christian faith and Slavic heritage.
During the campaign, the studio backdrop of one popular television talkshow on which Vucic was a guest featured a photograph of him flanked by pictures of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
To his supporters, Vucic is a cool head and a firm hand in a troubled region.
"He's done a good job so far," said Slavica Antonic, 69, an ice-cream vendor in downtown Belgrade. "He doesn't insult anyone in the region," she said.
Vucic's opponents, however, say he has an authoritarian streak that has led him to take control over the media in Serbia since his party rose to power in 2012 and he became prime minister three years ago.
He denies the charge but has struggled to shake it given his record when last in government in the dying days of Yugoslavia; then, in his late 20s, Vucic was Serbia's feared information minister behind draconian legislation designed to muzzle criticism of the government during the 1998-99 Kosovo war.
"The state of the media reflects the way Aleksandar Vucic rules Serbia - using pressure, abuse and often false statements," Sasa Jankovic, Serbia's former human rights ombudsman who was polling a distant second or third before Sunday's vote, told N1 television.