Cracks in SNS at the Local Level: Dissolved Boards, Defections

The Serbian Progressive Party is entering a new electoral cycle with a series of cracks at the local level, where municipal boards are being dissolved more frequently, some councillors are withholding their votes from their own party’s candidates, and the first individual defections to the opposition have appeared. The process has been under way since mid-2025 and, according to accounts from within the party, is accelerating as the next vote approaches.

The geography of these disruptions is not small. Boards have been dissolved or reorganized in at least six municipalities, among them Bor, Sokobanja, Knjazevac, Vranje, Sid and Novi Pazar. The party leadership frames such moves as routine personnel renewal, while sources in the local branches read them as an admission that the central office is losing its grip on the ground.

What Is Happening Inside the Municipal Boards

The clearest signal is not the removals but the voting. In Kula and Valjevo, SNS councillors declined to support their own party’s candidates, even though the ruling majority exists on paper. Such withholding of votes from within the ranks was long unthinkable in a party known for tight discipline, and it is now read as a serious indicator of internal strain.

Personal reckonings at the top of local branches have followed. Kraljevo Mayor Predrag Terzic was removed from the top of the town’s SNS, and his ouster was accompanied by inspections of the city budget. In Kragujevac, one councillor left the caucus and crossed to the opposition, citing the party’s attacks on student protests. The heaviest blow to the party’s image came from Bor, where former Mayor Aleksandar Milikic was arrested in a corruption investigation, giving the local affair a judicial epilogue.

The opposition follows these developments with visible satisfaction, but also with caution. Some of its figures admit that disarray in the ranks of power suits them politically, yet warn that dysfunctional local governments are ultimately paid for by citizens, through stalled decisions and poorer services.

Is This a Collapse or the Natural Wear of Power?

Political scientist Aleksandar Ivkovic describes the phenomenon as political entropy, the natural consequence of a situation in which one party holds power for too long. Once the membership’s main goals have already been met, he argues, motivation drops, and the discipline that rested on the expectation of reward weakens along with it. By that logic, the cracks are not the product of one dramatic split but of the slow wear of a machine that ran for years on inertia and loyalty.

For the party leadership this is an awkward moment. Dissolving a board is a tool of discipline, but every fresh dissolution signals that the central office failed to solve the problem earlier and by softer means. Add councillors who vote against their own and individuals who openly switch sides, and the picture is of a party forced to choose between a firm hand and concessions, with neither option coming free of cost.

The real test will be the next electoral cycle, when it will become clear whether these cracks are isolated cases or the start of a broader trend. Until then, a question increasingly asked even within the party remains open: is it easier to rebuild discipline once it breaks, or does a long-standing rule begin to crumble precisely at the local level, where it was once strongest?