Djordjevic: Ruling Party Flips Election Order for Candidate

Green-Left Front national lawmaker Biljana Djordjevic told the Beta news agency on August 12, at a protest in Cacak, that under constitutional deadlines Serbia’s presidential election should be held before the parliamentary one. The order is being reversed, she said, because the Serbian Progressive Party does not have a strong presidential candidate.

With that claim she tied together two topics that had until now been discussed separately: the timing of the election cycle and a staffing problem inside the country’s largest ruling party. Her explanation is about arithmetic, not procedure.

“They are hoping for a better result in the parliamentary elections, so that they can go into the presidential race from that stronger position,” Djordjevic told Beta.

She did not specify which constitutional deadlines she was referring to. Her assessment of the candidate is her own and has not been confirmed by anyone from the Serbian Progressive Party.

What the Green-Left Front is telling the rest of the opposition

Djordjevic recalled that her party has already announced it will back the list put forward by the student movement in the upcoming parliamentary election. She stressed that the Green-Left Front is not part of any opposition arrangement for how to run in the coming vote.

“We hope that everyone who decides to run in the elections does so rationally, with as few lists as possible,” Djordjevic said.

She added that it would be good for opposition actors to agree on cooperation during the elections, above all on monitoring the vote on election day itself. The message carries a distinction inside it: a party that rejects a pre-election coalition is at the same time asking for joint work at the polling stations.

She made the statement in Cacak, where she attended a protest by parents of pupils from an elementary school in Mrcajevci together with fellow national lawmaker Radomir Lazovic. The protest was organized over violence against a seventh-grade student at the school, which took place at the end of the school year.

Elections have not been called yet

As of August 12, no elections have been called in Serbia. President Aleksandar Vucic earlier named October or November as the likely month for the vote, the first time anyone at the top of government had named a specific window, as we previously reported. No decision has yet been made on which elections will be called, or in what order.

Serbia’s Unified Voters’ Register lists 6,439,075 voters. An independent commission has been formed to review the register, but part of the opposition parties and civil society organizations doubt the review will produce results before election day.

The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, ODIHR, recommended in late July that a full observation mission be deployed for the upcoming elections. The recommendation covers 32 long-term and 300 short-term observers, along with a dedicated media monitoring team. A report compiled after the mission’s visit to Serbia from July 6 to 10 found that key recommendations from earlier election cycles had not been implemented, particularly in preventing misuse of state resources, protecting voters from pressure, overseeing campaign financing and ensuring balanced media coverage.

Why does the order of elections even matter?

Because Serbia’s presidential and parliamentary elections do not have to be held on the same day, and whichever one comes first sets the frame for the one that follows. That is exactly Djordjevic’s claim when she says the ruling party would use a stronger parliamentary result to launch its presidential run.

The reverse order carries the reverse logic: a winning presidential candidate pulls the party list up, while a losing one weighs it down. As long as no election has been called, both calculations remain open, and that is the only reason the order is being debated at all in August.

In its report, ODIHR identified the student movement as an important new political factor, and it is precisely that movement’s list the Green-Left Front says it will back. The election calendar is therefore not only a technical question for the government, but also for the part of the opposition that has yet to face voters with its first list.

One act settles all of it: the decision to call the elections. Until it is published in the Official Gazette, the order remains a matter of interpretation, not obligation.