Aleksic: Student Movement Will Field a Candidate
Ceda Aleksic says the student movement would run its own candidate if presidential elections are called, responding to Vucic's idea of a separate vote.
- Student Ceda Aleksic said the student movement would field its own candidate if presidential elections are called.
- The statement follows President Aleksandar Vucic's announcement of possible separate presidential elections.
- The movement has spent more than one year demanding snap parliamentary elections and has pledged to run a student list.
- A central rally is planned in Kraljevo for Vidovdan, June 28, under the slogan "It all shows on Vidovdan."
Student Ceda Aleksic said the student movement would field its own candidate should presidential elections be called. The statement came after President Aleksandar Vucic floated the possibility of separate presidential elections, opening a new calculation in an electoral cycle that has weighed on Serbia’s political scene for more than a year.
Aleksic said the movement reached the decision after weighing a scenario in which such a vote actually takes place. In his words, the movement sees itself as a serious political force and has a prepared answer for different outcomes. The statement did not emerge in a vacuum. The student movement, born after the collapse of a canopy at the Novi Sad railway station that killed 16 people, has spent more than a year demanding snap parliamentary elections and has previously pledged to run a student list.
What would a separate presidential vote mean?
Vucic’s idea of a separate presidential vote shifts the frame of the debate. Until now the opposition, alongside the students, had insisted on snap parliamentary elections as the central demand. A proposal to carve out the presidential race as a stand-alone event moves the focus and forces every actor to spell out its position.
For the student movement, that means moving from the street to the ballot box, a step that carries both risk and opportunity. Aleksic has previously stressed that the movement keeps its independence from opposition parties and will not appear with them on the same ballot. Announcing its own presidential candidate is a logical extension of that line, as the movement tries to convert the support it has shown on the street into a measurable electoral result. The open question is who that name might be, given that the movement has so far avoided personalizing its leadership.
The authorities, for their part, see in this move a chance to splinter the opposition bloc. If the presidential vote is separated from the parliamentary one, the opposition and the students could run divided, a calculation that neither side hides in private. That is precisely why Aleksic’s statement is not merely a declaration of intent but also a signal that the movement does not intend to cede that field without a candidate.
Why does the timing matter?
The statement comes a week before Vidovdan, the date around which the movement is building a new wave of gatherings. The students have called a central rally in Kraljevo for June 28 under the slogan “It all shows on Vidovdan,” so the announcement of a presidential candidate also serves as a mobilizing signal ahead of that event. Tying the electoral message to a symbolically charged date is no accident, as the movement tries to keep up pressure between two waves of protest.
It remains to be seen whether Vucic will actually call separate presidential elections and whether the student movement can turn protests into an organized electoral machine. Without the formal organization Aleksic himself has pointed to, running in an election is technically hard to pull off. The calendar, as things stand, favors whoever moves first.
And if presidential elections really are called, is the student movement ready to stand united behind a candidate’s name, or will that decision divide it?
