Student List: 99 Names Proposed for Veto

Internal documents from the student movement’s vetting process have been published in full for the first time, complete with names and explanations. Informer ran, in early August, a list of 99 candidates proposed for veto from the preliminary student list, along with 39 pages of supporting material explaining why individual names should be removed. According to Kurir, the deadline for filing such proposals closed at midnight between August 5 and 6, so the public only saw the documents after the proposals had already been submitted.

At the top of the list is University of Belgrade rector Vladan Djokic. Second is Jasmina Paunovic, sixth is professor Milo Lompar. The list also names Jovo Bakic, former footballer Nemanja Vidic, Zlatko Kokanovic, Vida Ognjenovic and actor Dragan Jovanovic. The authenticity of the documents has not been independently confirmed, though the movement has not disputed that they are working material.

How does the vetting process work?

Candidate vetting runs through roughly 80 plenums at six state universities. Any plenum can propose that a name be struck from the list, and it submits its reasoning to the other faculties, which then get a chance to present counterarguments. In the end, all plenums vote on every candidate, and for a name to actually be removed, more than half of all plenums have to agree.

The published list, then, is not a decision but a collection of proposals still awaiting a vote. It covers 99 names from a working list that can run to as many as 250 candidates, the same number of seats as Serbia’s National Assembly.

University of Belgrade Faculty of Law student Petar Zivkovic described to the weekly Vreme how candidates were nominated in the first place:

At our plenum, any student who had a vision of who could be a candidate was able to propose them, explain why, and lay out their biography. After that, we held hours of discussion about potential candidates.

Zivkovic also made clear, on the same occasion, that ending up on the list does not mean a break with the movement:

Whether or not someone is vetoed, that does not mean they are no longer an ally in our fight. We have a lot of people acting in an advisory role.

The working list of possible candidates from all universities was merged in mid July. Since then, access to it has no longer rested with small working groups but with every plenum, which means thousands of people.

Why the rector tops the list

Djokic faces two episodes from his career in the documents: his handling of the Belgrade Waterfront project while serving as dean of the Faculty of Architecture, and his conduct in the case of Sinisa Mali’s doctorate while serving as rector. The conclusion of that section of the document, published by Informer, reads:

We propose a veto on Vladan Djokic’s candidacy, under points 2 and 6. Not on the criteria of the Directive, which he meets, and not on the story about the committee and the canopy, which we checked and dismissed as untrue. But because at the two greatest tests of his career, over Belgrade Waterfront as dean and over Sinisa Mali’s doctorate as rector, he chose silence and inaction, while the movement this list comes from is fighting against exactly that. We fully acknowledge his support for students since November 2024, but the question of the veto is not how a man conducts himself when the whole movement stands behind him, but how he conducted himself when he stood alone.

The explanations for the other candidates are shorter and carry different weight:

• Lompar is criticized for his closeness to political parties, for praise directed at Radovan Karadzic and Milan Nedic, and for publicly saying he does not want to be an MP
• Kokanovic is criticized over subsidies he received
• Dragan Jovanovic was put forward for veto because he did not submit a written biography

The difference in weight is obvious even to a layperson. One proposal rests on political views expressed years ago, another on someone failing to send in a document.

How documents keep leaking from the movement

This is not the first time internal correspondence from the movement has ended up in media close to the government. Actress and producer Bojana Maljevic, who earlier withdrew her own candidacy because she believes the permanent veto procedure is flawed, watched her withdrawal letter surface in the tabloids back in July. She wrote on X recently:

Things are going to get worse in the period ahead, because just as my letter ended up in the tabloids, so will the complete “arguments and counterarguments of students” from the vetting process, which on top of everything now also runs forever.

The documentation was presented by Informer editor in chief Dragan J. Vucicevic on a program on Informer television, where he used the term “hit list” for it and compared the explanations to Udba dossiers. The movement’s response points back to the procedure: a proposal is not a removal, and removal is decided by a majority of plenums.

What comes next

When students in the blockade came out with 20 program points at the end of July, the debate was about what the list offers. Three weeks later, it is about who is on it, based on material they did not publish themselves. For a movement that built its strength on making decisions in the open, that is an uncomfortable shift in ground.

Zivkovic told Vreme that the public will only see the true, final version of the student list once elections are called. Until then, plenums keep voting on each of the 99 names, and only once that vote is finished will it be clear how many candidates are actually removed, probably far fewer than 99, since a veto takes more than one plenum’s objection to succeed.

The date for calling elections has not yet been announced.