Boris Tadic and Tomislav Nikolic, the two candidates in the second round of Serbian presidential elections to be held this Sunday, presented their platforms to Serbian citizens in a TV duel on the national public broadcaster RTS on Wednesday night, calling on voters to go to the polls and criticising one another.
Tadic, the candidate of a coalition led by his ruling Democratic Party (DS), and Nikolic, the candidate of the opposition Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), were asked to speak about their platforms in terms of the economy, employment, foreign policy and security, European integration, Kosovo and the fight against corruption and crime.
Both candidates used a part of the time they were given for answers to criticise one another, with Nikolic doing it more often. Instead of giving concrete answers, he used most of his time to accuse Tadic of poor living standards, soaring unemployment and corruption in Serbia, as well as of reported irregularities in the first election round.
Refuting Nikolic's claims, Tadic recalled that the current problems were partly due to the time when Nikolic was in power in the late 1990s, and called on citizens to go to the polls on May 20 and send a message to the rest of the world that Serbia wanted to move forward and that it was a civilised and democratic country.
As for the issue of European integration, Nikolic said that his party supported the process of Serbia's integration with the EU, but not at the cost of giving up Kosovo, while Tadic said that his party's policy was "both Kosovo and the EU", which he said had already yielded results.
Nikolic did not offer any concrete solutions to the problem of Kosovo, saying only that as President he would work on reaching a consensus in Serbia on the matter, while Tadic recalled his four-point plan which ruled out the division of Kosovo or recognition of its independence and which, he said, had also been accepted internationally.
