Novakovic: Election Oversight Deal Possible in a Month

Deputy leader of the People’s Movement of Serbia (NPS) Borislav Novakovic said a deal between the student list and the opposition parties on election oversight can be expected within the next month. He said this on the FoNet news agency’s program “Kvaka 23,” in an episode titled “Opposition Ahead of the Elections,” published on August 1, 2026. The program is hosted by Milos Milic, and his statements were carried by other media the next day.

Novakovic, who also sits in the National Assembly as a lawmaker, specified that contacts with students do exist but remain informal. Neither side had previously mentioned a timeframe for that conversation, making this the first time anyone from the opposition leadership has named a deadline.

“The moment is slowly ripening, and a kind of agreement between the student list and the opposition on election oversight can probably be expected within the next month.”

That also describes the limits of the relationship between the two sides. There is no formal channel, and no names of interlocutors or meeting dates.

What Novakovic Wants From That Conversation

Novakovic said he sees mutual interest and that the conversation should be held as soon as possible.

“There is mutual interest in that happening. It seems urgent to me that we sit down and talk about election oversight, it is imperative that we go into it, on the question of oversight, as prepared as possible,” he explained.

In his assessment, not a single polling station in Serbia should be left uncovered, as he put it, by qualified people who are determined and authoritative in their intent to defend every vote. That describes a job measured in thousands of people, since polling station monitors register through the list running in the elections. That is also the math behind the deadline he named: the list of names is drawn up before election day, not after the elections are called.

Why Does the Arrival of Observers Matter in This Debate?

Novakovic interpreted the announced arrival of an OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) observer mission as confirmation that the election process is not in order.

“If ODIHR is coming, and unfortunately it has to come, and the situation is such that it needs to send observers, that means the election process here is illegal or partially legal. That is truly shameful.”

The mission’s recommendations are the same point the opposition has returned to for years, chiefly the voter list. Novakovic maintains that none of them have been implemented so far.

Students Keep Their Distance

Students have publicly said that opposition parties can serve as polling station monitors but not as a political partner, and that the student list itself will only be published on the day the elections are called. Novakovic says he will not pressure that decision and that it does not even need commenting on.

Biljana Djordjevic of the Green-Left Front also spoke in the same episode of “Kvaka 23,” presenting her party’s decision not to run with its own list but to back the student one instead. We previously reported on that decision and on the dispute inside the Green-Left Front’s board. FoNet billed the program’s third guest, analyst Dragoljub Andjelkovic, alongside the broader topic of the opposition running as several separate slates.

Pressure on the NPS is also coming from within. The party’s city board in Prokuplje quit the party and demanded that the movement not run in the elections but instead back the student list. Novakovic declined to comment on that in detail, saying only that every organization has the right to make the decisions it considers right for itself.

The Threshold Math Behind the Decision to Run

Novakovic cites the latest poll by the New Serbian Political Thought, according to which three opposition groupings clear the threshold.

“Mister Nestorovic, a hypothetical coalition around Mister Djilas, and also a hypothetical coalition (nothing has been formalized yet) around the People’s Movement of Serbia, the New Face of Serbia, the Ecological Uprising and Doctor Milic,” he said.

He calls the claim that an alliance with the pro European column led by the Party of Freedom and Justice would be stronger than running separately purely hypothetical, since no such poll has been done. He does not see running separately as a split within the opposition.

What Remains Unresolved Before the Elections Are Called

Novakovic does not expect major changes to election conditions and lists three things that remain unresolved:

• the voter list has not been cleaned up and that work has not been finished
• ODIHR’s recommendations have not been adopted or implemented
• the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Media (REM) still has no president

He added one procedural detail of his own. Elections, he says, cannot be called while a no-confidence motion against the government is still in procedure, and in his reading that is one reason the Assembly session on the no-confidence vote went ahead after all. That session has since ended, and Prime Minister Djuro Macut’s government did not lose the vote, removing that obstacle to calling elections.

That makes the deadline Novakovic named measurable. If there is no deal on election oversight by the start of September, the opposition and the student list will enter the campaign with two separate networks of monitors at the same polling stations.