What Vucic Is Really Running For: Split Elections

Aleksandar Vucic has announced that he is entering the pre-election campaign, but his wording opened more questions than it closed. The president of Serbia said he was joining the race as a citizen and that he would become prime minister only if, as he put it, the people elect him. That framing sits awkwardly with the constitution, because the prime minister in Serbia is not chosen on a voting ballot.

What is actually unfolding is an electoral cycle with two separate votes. Vucic specified that the presidential and parliamentary elections would be held apart, and that the parliamentary vote would most likely come first, followed by the presidential one. This is not a technical footnote. The order of voting decides which race casts a shadow over the other, which list first tests the public mood, and how much momentum a candidate carries into the later contest for head of state.

Why can Vucic not run for prime minister?

The answer lies in how power is structured. Citizens do not elect the prime minister directly. The National Assembly does, after a mandate-holder proposed by the president of the republic secures a majority of deputies. When Vucic says he will be prime minister if the people elect him, he is describing an indirect route: the list he leads wins votes, that list forms a parliamentary majority, and the majority then elects the government. In technical terms, a citizen votes for a list, not for a name at the top of the cabinet.

This is why two roles that blur easily in a campaign need to be kept apart. One is the role of list leader, a symbolic figure who drives the rating and personalizes the offer. The other is the role of future prime minister, which legally comes into being only after the election, inside parliament. Vucic appears to be aiming at the first, while leaving the second as an outcome rather than a promise on the ballot. Opposition critics read this as a familiar pattern in which the presidential office is used as leverage for a parliamentary campaign, while the ruling party’s leadership sees it as a legitimate way to place its leader at the head of the offer.

Who leads the lists and what stays unresolved

By our understanding from behind the scenes, the Serbian Progressive Party already treats Vucic as the leader of its parliamentary list. That is the least surprising part of the story. Far less clear is who will be the ruling coalition’s presidential candidate, since that name has not been settled, and the second round of voting depends heavily on it.

On the other side of the line, the open questions multiply. It is not known who will lead the opposition lists, nor how the so-called student list will position itself, having emerged from months of protest as a political factor but without a clearly named leadership. For the opposition, the order of the elections is a double test. The parliamentary vote reveals how deep the fragmentation runs and whether several columns can run together, while the presidential race demands a single figure able to gather the votes of the discontented.

Vucic also said that the parliamentary elections that were demanded are coming, and that the presidential vote, which he claims no one asked for, is something he himself is offering as an addition. That single sentence captures the arithmetic of the whole cycle. The authorities choose the terrain and the tempo, while the opposition and the student bloc have yet to decide whether they enter it divided or behind a shared candidate.

One question remains, and neither side has a ready answer for it: if you vote for lists, but parliament ultimately chooses the prime minister, how much are voters truly choosing a name, and how much is that name simply promised to them?