After Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced he will step down in the coming weeks, many believe he intends to maintain his long rule by running for the premiership in the next elections.
Katarina Baletic
Widespread speculation that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic plans to seek the position of prime minister has followed his weekend announcement that he will step down as head of state soon.
“I will only remain president for a few more weeks, and then I will resign,” Vucic told a rally of thousands of supporters of his ruling Serbian Progressive Party, SNS in Belgrade on Saturday.
Vucic’s government has been under serious pressure from sustained mass protests since the November 2024 Novi Sad railway station disaster. His second term as president ends next year and according to the law, he can’t run as a presidential candidate again.
Vucic didn’t say he was aiming to take over the premier’s role but told SNS supporters that “in the upcoming elections – if they ask me to and if they want me to – I will join you in helping to win the people’s trust”.
However, Kathleen Van Brempt, an MEP from the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, declared that “Vucic and his party have no intention of giving up power”.
Van Brempt claimed that Vucic is seeking to “install a loyal proxy as president, continue to rule from behind the scenes, and eventually return as prime minister”.
Vucic’s allies have stated in recent weeks that the populist-nationalist leader, whose party has been in power since 2012, should become prime minister after leaving the presidency.
SNS chief Milos Vucevic, said on June 11 that “the natural choice is for Vucic to become prime minister”.
A few days later, parliament speaker Ana Brnabic said that she “sincerely hopes that Vucic will accept our invitation and appeals from us and from the Serbian Progressive Party to be our candidate for prime minister”.
In January, Vucic told TV Informer that he could be a prime ministerial candidate at the next elections. “That possibility exists if public opinion polls show that Serbia would head in the wrong direction if I were not the candidate,” he said.
Before he became president, Vucic served as a first prime minister from 2012 to 2014, and then as prime minister from 2014 to 2017.
The call for early elections has been a key demand of the student-led protest movement, which accuses Vucic’s administration of corruption and increasing authoritarianism.
“Finally, the voices of the many young people in Serbia are being heard, who have taken to the streets for some time now and are demanding a change of direction for the country. A change of direction, out of corruption and an authoritarian downward spiral,” Andreas Schieder, another MEP from the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, wrote on X on Saturday.
Parliament speaker Brnabic hit back at Schieder for interfering: “Who cares what you welcome and who and what gives you the right to demand anything from Serbia? Go away!” she wrote on X.
On Sunday, students who have been leading the long-running protest movement organised another anti-government rally in the central town of Kraljevo. Speakers at the event reiterated the protest movement’s main message ahead of the expected elections, chanting: “The students are winning.”
