Radonjic Calls on Opposition to Rally Behind Student List

Ognjen Radonjic, a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade and a member of the Inquiry Committee investigating responsibility for the collapse of the canopy at the Novi Sad Railway Station, said that everyone who wants a change of government should back the student list and turn out as a single column. He made the statement in an interview with the Nova portal, published on August 10, 2026, which N1 carried the same day.

Alongside his call for unity, Radonjic laid out a concrete model for joint election monitoring: a single database of polling board members, observers and lawyers at every polling station, a shared protocol for reporting irregularities, and a coordination center that would publish field data as voting takes place. He added that citizens must be told in advance that defending the result will also mean public pressure, mass protests and blockades of institutions.

Why This Comes From a Member of the Inquiry Committee

Radonjic has spent the past two years working to establish responsibility for a tragedy that killed 16 people. 21 months have passed since the canopy collapsed, the two-year mark falls this autumn, and a judicial outcome is still pending. Three proceedings are underway, two in Belgrade and one in Novi Sad.

At the top of the chain of responsibility, in his assessment, sit one president, two prime ministers and three cabinet ministers, alongside the main contractor, the Chinese consortium CRIC-CCCC. That is his own assessment, not an established fact: guilt has not been determined by a final verdict in any of the three proceedings, and none of the names he mentions has been named in a confirmed indictment.

That is also where his shift from the courts to elections comes from. If responsibility is not established in a courtroom, the calculation is that the question moves to the polling station, which makes the polling station the thing that needs defending.

What a Joint Database of Election Monitors Would Mean

Radonjic wants opposition parties to stop calculating how many lists to run and instead put their infrastructure to work monitoring the vote. He spelled it out in detail:

Those who want to defend the electoral will of citizens must, first, set up a joint opposition monitoring system, a single database of polling board members, observers and lawyers at every polling station, clear protocols for reporting irregularities (photographs, official records, urgent appeals to the RIK and the public), and a coordination center that tracks events on the ground in real time and publishes them.

The request is operational, not declarative. A database of polling board members and observers would require parties to open up to each other the lists of people they have on the ground in each municipality, something that until now has been a matter of negotiation rather than a rule.

The second part of his proposal steps outside the institutional framework. He told Nova that appeals are not enough:

Electoral will is not defended only through appeals and complaints, but also through organized street action

He describes that street action as, preferably, nonviolent. The third condition he lists is intensive and constructive communication with foreign actors. He singles out election night as the decisive moment: “In the end, it will all come down to what we do when, on election day, around 9 p.m., an organized criminal group declares its victory,” Radonjic said, using a label the government rejects and which has not been established in any proceeding.

A Call for Unity Behind a List Still Being Built

The appeal comes at a moment when the student list still has no final lineup. Serbian News previously reported that 99 names had been put forward for removal, meaning the list is still taking shape through an internal vetting process. Radonjic is asking other parties to fall in line behind a list that, right now, no one can see in its final form.

There is also a practical gap in his model. A joint database of election monitors needs someone to run it, and no name, body or party has been named as the host of that database. Without that, the proposal amounts to an appeal, and an appeal cannot be activated on election night.

There has been no reaction from the ruling structure to these assessments as of publication, and the interview itself contains no response from the other side. The government presents the ongoing court proceedings as proof that institutions are working, while Radonjic sees the same proceedings as being drawn out.

The next verifiable step will not be a speech but a document: once elections are called, though no date has been set yet, it will become clear whether opposition lists submit a joint proposal for polling board composition or each goes its own way. That is the moment that will show how much of this proposal actually held.