Vucic: I Was Elected to Stop the Street Ruling Serbia

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic spent Monday in the Rasina District, touring seven sites across five municipalities in a single day: Brus, Aleksandrovac, Trstenik, Krusevac, Varvarin and Cicevac. The visit continued a tour during which the president has been rolling out a development program for five districts in southern Serbia, and for the first time in this round of visits, he explicitly ruled out a transitional or expert government.

At a gathering in Aleksandrovac, at the local Culture Center, Vucic told the assembled residents why he was rejecting that scenario.

I was elected not to allow the street to run Serbia

the president said, adding that he had been elected by the people fairly and by an overwhelming majority of votes.

Seven Stops in Five Municipalities

The tour started at ten in the morning in Brus, at the organic fruit producer Colici Plus doo in the village of Grasevci, which grows raspberries and blackberries. Next came the Cvetkovic winery in Stanjevo, in the Aleksandrovac municipality, at 10:45 a.m. The afternoon leg of the tour included:

• work on the new “Biseri” kindergarten in Trstenik, at 11:45 a.m.
• the Regional Industrial and Technology Park in Krusevac, at 12:35 p.m.
• work on the Veterans’ Home in Krusevac, at 1:15 p.m.
• the Vucetic family household in the Parcane settlement, Varvarin municipality, at 2:05 p.m.
• the Gagic family household in Plocnik, Cicevac municipality, at 3:10 p.m.

Several government ministers accompanied the president on the tour, and according to what Vucic told residents, the visit ran past its official schedule with an additional stop at the Cokot winery in the village of Starci.

No Transitional or Expert Government

The day’s political message was delivered in Brus, not Aleksandrovac, and at two separate stops. Addressing citizens at the Culture Center, the president said that just as the country started moving forward, it was “attacked from outside with enormous money invested in unrest within the country,” backed, he said, by some domestic politicians seeking power without elections.

Serbia is not a handful of oats for every crow to peck at

he said on that occasion, adding that Serbia would keep moving forward, that wages and pensions would rise, and that no one would be allowed to blackmail the state.

Later, as he continued talking with residents in Brus, a local woman complained that a nearby river was clogged with logs. The president responded by instructing the director of Srbijavode, the state water management company, to begin project documentation for a dam immediately, then added a broader message about the makeup of the future government.

There will be neither a transitional nor an expert government

he said, noting that he was guaranteeing this with his own life and that the future cabinet would be a Serbian government, not, as he put it, “a government of servants beholden to anyone else.”

Money for Roads, Water Supply and a Factory

Most of Vucic’s remarks in Brus were devoted to infrastructure. The president said that “Brus is small in population, but it is a large municipality by area and a very difficult one, a hilly and mountainous municipality,” and announced that work on the “Vignjiste” water supply system, worth around 2.5 million euros, would begin before the end of the year. Both Euronews and Tanjug report the same deadline, by the end of 2026.

The president set a separate deadline for road paving in the Brus municipality.

Before the end of October we will start paving 15 kilometers of roads in the Brus municipality with 350 million dinars, and in seven to ten days we will start on almost three million euros’ worth of work

Vucic announced, specifying that in the coming months, road infrastructure in the Brus municipality, counting both these investments, would receive a total of around six million euros, and that work would cover almost every village in the municipality. In one part of its report, Republika ties this same six million euro figure to “2025,” while Tanjug and Euronews refer to “the coming months” without naming a specific year in the quote itself.

An additional 600,000 euros is needed for an exploration well at the Brus spa (Bruska Banja), the president said. He also announced that talks were underway with an investor over a production plant on the border between the Brus and Aleksandrovac municipalities, expected to employ between 150 and 200 people, with completion planned by May 2027. For a recreation center in Brus, a project the president called the local “Vracar,” six million euros has been earmarked, with construction to begin in the second half of 2027.

During the stop at Colici Plus, the president told the owner of the company, which buys organic raspberries and blackberries from local growers, that the state wants to help domestic businesspeople, since foreign investors have no interest in villages like Grasevci.

It’s important for them to see that we want to help them, so that they can help the farmer

Vucic said.

What’s Next

From the same tour, the president announced he would attend the opening of a robot factory in Sabac on August 29, which is why he turned down an invitation from a Brus resident to attend the consecration of a local church that same day. That shifts the political calendar south, to the Macva District, after the Rasina District, while the question of the future government’s makeup, on which the president hedged twice today, remains open until the next election cycle he has himself floated as the alternative.