Six weeks of protests against Serbian President Vucic in Belgrade

Few thousand people turned out Saturday in Belgrade for the sixth week of street protests against populist Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and his government.

Demonstrations first started after thugs beat up an opposition politician in November, prompting calls for more democracy and an end to political violence in Serbia.

In December, Vucic said he would not bow to opposition demands “even if there were 5 million people in the street”, but said he would be willing to hold a snap election. Opposition parties said they would boycott such an election.

Vucic has the backing of around 53 percent of the electorate. His coalition also has a majority of 160 deputies in the 250 seat parliament. If the opposition parties ran as an alliance, they could count on only around 15 percent of the vote.