Vucic Live on TV 49 Times in First 11 Days of August
CRTA counted 49 live appearances by the president, carried by 25 television stations. That is twice as many as in all of last August, and the election campaign has not formally started.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic appeared live on television 49 times in the first 11 days of August, according to a count by the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA). The measurement was published on Wednesday.
His appearances were carried by 25 television stations, including public broadcasters and channels with national coverage. “The president is present as if in a campaign,” CRTA wrote on X.
Twice as many as in all of last August
The measurement only makes sense in comparison. Vucic appeared live 24 times during the whole of August 2025. This August, in eleven days, just over a third of the month, he has already doubled that number.
His record remains March 2025, when he spoke live 61 times. CRTA says this August could break that record, with nineteen days still left in the month.
The organization also tracked the content of his appearances. “The dominant theme of Vucic’s appearances strongly resembles an election campaign, and a functionary’s campaign at that,” CRTA stated. In Serbian election practice, the term functionary’s campaign describes the use of public office and state resources for appearances that, in practice, are indistinguishable from a party campaign.
Infrastructure took up more than 40 percent of the time
According to CRTA’s findings, the breakdown of topics looked like this:
- more than 40 percent of media time went to infrastructure projects
- most of the rest was taken up by wars in the former Yugoslavia and relations in the region
- only two appearances were mostly devoted to international politics
The last point stands out. During those eleven days, Serbia hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, an event that by any classification counts as major foreign policy, yet it did not receive proportional airtime before the domestic audience. Added up, almost the entire media space went to topics addressed to voters in Serbia, not to observers outside it.
Why does it matter that no election has been called?
Because at the time of the measurement, no legal rule on equal treatment of campaign participants was in force. Those rules, and the oversight that comes with them, only take effect once elections are called. Everything measured in the first eleven days of August, then, took place in a period that is not formally a campaign and in which media space is not allocated by any rule at all.
The authorities themselves signal that this period is short. Milos Vucevic, former prime minister and president of the Serbian Progressive Party, said on August 13 that Serbia could be less than a hundred days away from elections, adding that all participants should accept the electorate’s will in advance.
While the president’s presence is measured in channels and minutes, part of the contest is also playing out off screen. Students have announced a tour of the Pcinja District on August 15 and 16, part of the Student in Every Village campaign, going door to door in Vranje and the surrounding area, and setting up stands in Vladicin Han, Surdulica, Bujanovac and Trgoviste. That kind of work has no live broadcast and is not captured by any measurement of media time, so the two forms of presence cannot be compared on the same scale.
This outlet has previously reported that the election commission has stayed silent on election data for seventeen days. Combined with CRTA’s measurement, the picture is the same from both sides: the body that should be overseeing the election process is not releasing data, while the media space, even before the process formally begins, already has its dominant figure. The real test comes on the day elections are called, when the same number will be measured under rules that only start to apply then.
