Early Elections a No-Go, Analysts Agree

Djordje Vukadinovic (Youtube/Printscreen)

With the rising popularity of the protesting university students’ movement, there is no way President of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic will dare call snap parliamentary elections any time soon, several political analysts have agreed and added that he will most likely postpone the vote until late 2026, considering the current public sentiment in the wake of the one-year anniversary of the Novi Sad railway station collapse.

Djordje Vukadinovic, the editor-in-chief of Nova Srpska Politicka Misao (New Serbian Political Thought) quarterly magazine, opined that the memorial rally for the 16 victims of the accident held in Novi Sad on Nov. 1 showed Vucic a level of “intellectual strength and organization which certainly left him doubting” his next steps and likely caused him to abandon the idea of calling elections this year.

This is in line with a statement by Professor Dusan Vucevic of the Belgrade University School of Political Science, who said his research indicates that support for the announced university students’ ticket is on the rise and already 10 percent ahead of the regime.

Meanwhile, political scientist Boban Stojanovic recalled that any parliamentary election held before December 2027 – when the regular vote is supposed to happen – would, by definition, be early. Therefore, “staging elections any weekend before” said deadline would formally fulfill the protesting public’s demand for a snap vote.

Stojanovic, however, concluded by pointing out that “the best indicator of how much Serbia has changed [over the past year] is that Vucic now doesn’t dare to stage even his [customarily] skewed and unfair elections” – a belief echoing the notion that the country will not see early elections in the near future.