Knic Socialists Lose Council Group Over Alliance With SNS

The Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) council group in the Knic municipal assembly has effectively ceased to exist just weeks into the new term. Bojan Starcevic resigned at the very first session where he was sworn in, while Goran Matic left the group and now sits as an independent councilor. Both men give the same reason: cooperation with the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).

The immediate trigger for the break in this small Sumadija municipality was the post of deputy speaker of the assembly. Under the coalition deal between the SNS and the SPS, the position was supposed to go to the Socialists, but a few days ago it was taken instead by Slobodan Betulic of United Serbia. Matic says no explanation was ever given for the move.

The Socialists won two seats in Knic at the last election. According to the sequence of events Matic describes, both seats left the party’s council group within a short span, so the party that entered local government now has not a single councilor of its own in the chamber. That arithmetic matters more in Knic than any statement: the coalition partner lost the very votes it was meant to bring to the table.

Why the councilors left the group

Matic won his seat on the SPS list and left the council group after the constitutive session. He explained the party leadership’s decision to enter government with the Progressives during an appearance on Nova TV.

“After the last election, the Socialist Party of Serbia held two seats in the Knic municipality. The president of the Socialist Party struck a coalition deal with the SNS on the SPS entering local government, and in return the Socialist Party was promised the post of deputy speaker of the assembly. For me, as someone who has been a Socialist for 35 years since the party’s founding, and knowing who we’re dealing with at the level of the Knic municipality, that decision was unacceptable.”

The dispute, he says, did not start this summer. The first time party headquarters asked the local branch to back the Progressives, he says, was back in 2023, when part of the Socialist group already walked out. Relations have been poor ever since the SNS took power in the municipality, he adds, and he describes the Progressives’ conduct toward the Socialists and toward the citizens of Knic since 2016 as appalling.

“The SNS in Knic is a violent group of uneducated people, we don’t want to work with them now or ever,” Matic said.

The agreement the other side won’t acknowledge

The Progressives, according to the independent councilor, now dispute that any deal on sharing posts ever existed.

“They even deny the agreement with us exists. The president who signed the agreement has unfortunately passed away, so they deny that such an agreement ever existed,” Matic says.

SPS deputy president Branko Ruzic, speaking to the weekly Vreme, recalled that dissatisfaction with the Progressives’ treatment of the Socialists in that municipality existed even while Dragana Jovanovic was SPS president, before her death.

That leaves the disputed agreement without anyone left to confirm it, which in local coalition politics is about as final a dead end as it gets. A post once handed to another party does not revert automatically, and the deputy speaker’s chair in Knic now belongs to United Serbia.

Who will fill the empty council seats?

No one, for now. Starcevic resigned as soon as he received his mandate, and under the rules his seat passes to the next candidate on the same list.

“The party leadership had never before asked us to cooperate with the SNS, even though we were in a coalition. This time it happened, so I left the group immediately. Now Bojan Starcevic has done the same. The party then contacted the next candidate on the list, and he refused as well, which is why the seats remain vacant,” Matic told Vreme.

Starcevic said he remains a Socialist and is stepping away from the council bench because of the social circumstances the country has entered. He also apologized for having spent ten years helping secure majorities for decisions that, in his words, ultimately served the Serbian Progressive Party’s hierarchy.

A local dispute as ammunition in the party’s internal fight

Matic believes the dominant faction within the Knic branch is the one gathered around Ruzic, and that most local Socialists are unhappy with the policy of backing the Progressives, a policy he says has cost the party trust and turned it into an appendage.

Ruzic, in his comments to Vreme, said the problem is not confined to Knic.

“I can only assess the current processes in Knic through the lens of a general lack of self respect, an abandonment of founding principles and a masochism present in no small number of local governments, but it is even more alarming that such tendencies exist within the SPS leadership itself.”

He added that there are also positive examples of coalition relations, citing Kragujevac, and voiced hope that the Knic problem would be resolved with support from Kragujevac assembly speaker Ivica Momcilovic.

The case of the small Sumadija municipality has thus become an argument in a debate playing out across the whole party. Asked about the growing strength of the faction around Ruzic, Matic said he hopes for change and expects a clear position from the SPS deputy president, adding that such a stance would win him broader support.

What remains on the ground is measurable. The Knic municipal assembly is operating with two vacant council seats, the Socialists have lost both of the council positions they won at the election, and the post they were promised under the coalition deal is held by a third party. The next test comes at the first session where the ruling majority needs the votes for an actual decision.