Student List Takes Shape: 250 Names and Rector Djokic

The student electoral list is slowly taking shape, but its first outline did not come from the students themselves. Media close to the government published a roster of about 250 names, topped by Belgrade University Rector Vladan Djokic and retired prosecutor Jasmina Paunovic. The move immediately opened a double dispute: over who actually stands behind the list, and over who first pushed it into public view.

The students reacted quickly. The movement says the list is a fabrication and that no roster now in circulation is their official document. In their words, the only genuine list will be released on the day elections are called, and everything before that is treated as an attempt to pin on them a lineup and a program they did not define. That also rejects the assumption that names such as Djokic and Paunovic are already confirmed candidates.

Who actually stands behind the 250 names?

For now there is no clear answer. The government treats the roster as an established fact and a target for attack, while the students treat it as someone else’s construction. Between those two claims lies a space that will be filled only by a formal act, the release of the real list. Until then, every mention of specific names remains an announcement rather than a confirmation.

President Aleksandar Vucic joined the dispute without restraint. Appearing on Informer, he accused the candidates on the alleged list of being incompetent and of having no idea, plan or program, and in earlier remarks he used the sharp label parasites. For a movement that builds its legitimacy on distance from party politics, such language from the top of government is at once a challenge and a fuel, because it places them at the center of the pre-election story before they have released a single name of their own.

Vucic earlier announced that he would enter the campaign without holding office and that in September he has presidential obligations abroad. That step, stepping out of the formal role during the campaign, fits a familiar pattern in which the party leader positions himself as the main actor of the fight while the presidential institution is temporarily pushed into the background.

Will the opposition accept a single list?

This is where the interests of the student movement and the opposition parties intersect. Dragan Milic, Zdravko Ponos and Dragan Djilas insist on a single joint list of students and the opposition as the condition for defeating the Serbian Progressive Party. Their calculation is simple: a fragmented run splits votes, while a unified list gathers discontent into one electoral result.

For the students, however, that very closeness to the parties is the most sensitive point. A movement that grew out of criticism of the establishment must weigh how much formal alliance it can accept without losing what set it apart, the sense that it is not the extended arm of any party. Publishing the alleged list in pro-government media makes that risk visible ahead of time, because it joins student names to an opposition frame before the students themselves have decided where the line lies.

The question of timing remains open. The students say the real list will wait for the day elections are called, the government is already campaigning against a roster the students do not recognize, and the opposition is pushing everyone under one roof. What do you think, will a unified list of students and the opposition give an edge over the government, or will the premature pinning of names and labels weaken the movement before it even faces voters?