Uzice Today: Vucic Rally at 6 PM, Protest at 3 PM

Aleksandar Vucic speaks today, Saturday, August 29, starting at 6 PM on Partizan Square in Uzice, at a Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) rally called “United Serbia.” Citizens have announced their own gathering on the same square the same day, three hours earlier, at 3 PM. Ahead of the president’s arrival, the city has spent the morning putting up a stage, hanging banners and flags, and, according to local council members, several thousand gendarmerie officers have arrived in Uzice.

The campaign for the early parliamentary election has not formally started, but the president has spent days touring different parts of Serbia. Uzice, by his own account, is one of the cities where he announced a large rally after being advised, he said, not to go there. “In however many places I was told not to go, I was the only one who went anyway. Since they told me not to go to Uzice and Novi Sad, I’ve now scheduled big rallies in exactly Uzice and Novi Sad,” Vucic said ahead of the trip.

City on high alert

According to information provided to the Masina outlet by Vladan Sindjic, a Green-Left Front councilman in the Uzice City Assembly, hotels and student dormitories around the city have been booked out for gendarmerie lodging, estimated at several thousand beds. Sindjic says cafes in the city have closed, banners and flags are being hung along the streets, and equipment is being set up to broadcast the rally.

Two parking lots have also been closed, one by the Krcagovo sports hall and the other known as Srusena Posta in the city center. Vehicle owners were asked to clear the parking area near the stadium between August 28 and 30, with a warning that any remaining cars would be towed.

Activist Pavle Cicvaric told Masina he expects “the all too familiar scenes.”

“I think people are angry because they still remember last summer and the level of police brutality we saw during that period. Vucic has been actively campaigning for a while now, and Uzice’s turn has come. I expect we’ll see the all too familiar scenes: buses, supporters being bused in.”

Why the welcome committee vote failed

The political backdrop to the president’s visit was also shaped by a session of the Uzice City Assembly held on August 24. Councilman Dragan Aleksic of the Uzice Republic party proposed forming a committee to welcome the president of Serbia. Fourteen opposition councilors voted for the proposal, 19 SNS councilors voted against it, and one councilwoman from the ruling majority abstained, so the proposal failed.

Uzice City Assembly Speaker Danijela Vasiljevic explained the rejection by saying that forming such a committee falls outside the assembly’s authority. The proposal, she said, was “unfounded.”

At the same session, councilman Radovan Novakovic raised the presence of Uzice Basic Court President Suncica Misailovic at an SNS rally in the village of Dreznik near Uzice, arguing it called her impartiality into question. Vasiljevic replied that both the court president and she herself had attended those rallies as private citizens, not in their official capacity.

Democratic Party leader Srdjan Milivojevic called on citizens from across Serbia to come to City Square in Uzice today. National Assembly Speaker Ana Brnabic, meanwhile, wrote on X that Vucic does not need a special welcome committee when he travels around Serbia and meets citizens, saying he has “never asked for such a welcome, nor would he accept one.”

The city where the ruling party lost power in 2024

Tonight’s rally in Uzice carries political weight that is no accident. In the 2024 local election, the ruling coalition had to seek support from part of the opposition just to form a government in the city, having failed to win a majority of council seats on its own. Vucic has previously said he hopes for a win specifically in Uzice and Novi Sad, two cities where SNS has posted weaker results than its national average in recent years.

Our outlet has previously reported that SNS took over the spot of a student-led action with a stand near the Russian Tsar restaurant in Belgrade, that First Deputy Prime Minister Milos Vucevic floated October 18 as a possible election date, and that a proposed budget rebalance set aside 2.8 billion dinars for the coming election. Vucic himself had earlier said the election would be called within days, so today in Uzice, between the 6 PM rally and the 3 PM citizens’ gathering, that claim gets its first test.