SPS Sets August 25 Deadline, Says It Runs Alone
Branches of the Socialist Party of Serbia must submit candidates for the parliamentary list and presidential nominees by August 25, as party leaders insist there have been no talks with SNS.
The Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) has set August 25 as the deadline for its branches to submit candidates for the parliamentary list, and party leaders say SPS will enter the election on its own. The same date applies to nominations for president of Serbia.
The deadline was announced on August 8 by Vladan Zagradjanin, president of the Executive Board of the SPS Main Board, in a statement to the newspaper Nova. The requirement covers municipal, city and district branches, meaning the party’s entire organizational network and not just Belgrade. Zagradjanin echoed the line already set by party leader Ivica Dacic: “We are going into the election on our own.”
Running alone does not mean running without any partners. SPS still forms a coalition with United Serbia and the Greens of Serbia, the same lineup the Socialists have used for years. What is missing from that list is the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).
Were there talks with the Progressives?
Zagradjanin says no. “We haven’t talked with SNS. Whether we will, I honestly don’t know,” he told Nova. The sentence has two halves worth reading literally: the first denies any contact so far, the second leaves the fall open.
That is why the August 25 deadline is more than a scheduling detail on the party calendar. If branches submit their candidates by then, SPS enters September with a finished slate of names, one that can still be reshuffled but no longer built from scratch. Any deal on a joint run after that date would mean someone gets dropped from the list, and that is a conversation parties typically handle loudly and with difficulty.
Dacic himself said in late July that SPS was already preparing for the election and that continued cooperation with the Progressives after the vote would serve Serbia’s best interest. The two positions do not contradict each other. Running alone is a negotiating stance, not a break.
Polls keep the party just above the threshold
The numbers explain why an independent run is even on the table. According to a survey by the New Serbian Political Thought institute, SPS running alone stands at 4.9 percent. A Crta poll puts the party at 3.8 percent. The election threshold is three percent.
The gap between the two figures is little more than a single percentage point, but politically it points to two different outcomes:
- at 4.9 percent, SPS clears the threshold with room to spare and secures a parliamentary group that counts
- at 3.8 percent, the party sits in a band where sampling error and turnout decide everything
- below three percent, the list wins no seats at all, regardless of the raw vote count
That math was already being pushed publicly by party deputy leader Branko Ruzic, who called on the Socialists to draw clear red lines toward SNS and argued that an independent run built on such a pivot could bring the party as high as seven percent. We reported on that call when he made it. Zagradjanin’s statement is the first time a concrete date has been attached to a decision that had until now only been discussed in general terms.
Party leadership denies talk of internal factions
Zagradjanin refused to acknowledge any internal split, even though Ruzic is publicly described as the figure around whom a second bloc within SPS is gathering. Zagradjanin says Ruzic is entitled to his opinion, but that decisions are made solely by the party’s official bodies.
“We don’t have factions, we don’t have anything like that.”
As proof, he pointed to the July session of the Main Board, which he says drew 500 people and unanimously backed Dacic’s statement on running alone, with no abstentions. “Ivica Dacic is the absolute leader of SPS. He has our absolute support,” Zagradjanin added.
A unanimous vote at a 500-person gathering can be read either way. It can mean there really is no dispute, or it can mean the dispute simply isn’t aired in front of that many people. The episode in Knic, where local Socialists refused to cooperate with the Progressives, showed that Ruzic’s position has support beyond his own office.
The next checkable point is the deadline itself. By August 25 it will be clear how many branches submitted candidates and whose names sit at the top of those lists, and that will say more about the balance of power inside SPS than any statement about unity.
