Student List Leaks: Soskic, Tomanovic, Bakic and Vidic
Serbia's student movement confirms it will field its own list and candidate if elections are called, as names of a former central bank governor, lawyer, professors and a footballer leak.
- Serbia's student movement has confirmed it will field its own list and a single candidate if elections are called.
- Leaked names include former central bank governor Dejan Soskic, lawyer Zdenko Tomanovic, professors Jovo Bakic and Milo Lompar, and footballer Nemanja Vidic.
- Candidates may not be students, nor former officials of the ruling coalition or the parliamentary opposition.
- The list becomes final only once elections are called, with each faculty proposing four candidates.
For the first time, Serbia’s student movement has stated unambiguously that it will contest any eventual elections with its own list and its own candidate, and the first names are beginning to leak. According to accounts circulating in political circles, those put forward include former National Bank of Serbia governor Dejan Soskic, lawyer Zdenko Tomanovic, Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy professor Jovo Bakic, Faculty of Philology professor Milo Lompar, and former footballer Nemanja Vidic.
These are names floated as possible list leaders or prominent members, but none is official yet. The movement has insisted that the choice of candidates must not be the product of a backroom deal among a narrow circle, but the result of a procedure involving every faculty in the blockade.
By what rules is the list chosen?
The mechanism the students have set up clearly limits who can even appear on the spisak, the list. Candidates may not be active students, which shields the movement from accusations that individuals are using the protest to launch their own political careers. Also excluded are former officials of the ruling coalition, as well as former officials of the parliamentary opposition, an attempt to present the list as a break from both the government and the parties that have sat in parliament for years.
The procedure is decentralised. Each faculty proposes four names, so-called candidate candidates, and a shortlist is reached through internal voting and consensus. Only once elections are formally called does the list become final. In other words, everything leaking now is a working draft, subject to change until the last moment.
That model gives the movement legitimacy from the ground up, but it carries risk. The wider the circle of those proposing names, the harder it is to maintain unity around a single name for a presidential or top-of-ticket position. Soskic has spent years profiling himself publicly as a critic of the government’s economic policy, while Tomanovic and professors Bakic and Lompar come from entirely different spheres, academic and legal. Vidic would bring recognition beyond the political audience, but a sporting biography does not guarantee votes.
What does this mean for the election cycle?
Confirmation that the movement is heading into elections changes the calculus for every actor. The government has so far treated the student protests as street pressure with no electoral dimension, and the announcement of a list gives that pressure an institutional form. For the parliamentary opposition the situation is even more delicate, because a student list that explicitly excludes their existing officials is competing for the same pool of voters.
The open question is whether the names leaking today will end up on the final list or are merely the first in a longer series of working proposals. Until elections are called, every leak should be read as part of a process, not a decision. The list is being built faculty by faculty, and the movement’s message is that the final word does not rest with the backrooms.
Would names like Soskic, Tomanovic or Vidic be reason enough for you to vote for a student list, or does the programme decide?
