PUPS Joins Vucic's United Serbia Election List
PUPS announced it is joining the Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia election list and said all 128 of its municipal and city committees are ready ahead of the October 25 vote.
The Party of United Pensioners, Farmers and Proletarians of Serbia (PUPS) announced today, September 9, that it will run in the upcoming early parliamentary elections on the “Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia” list. According to the party, all 128 of its municipal and city committees across Serbia are ready, in action, organization and personnel, for the campaign ahead of the vote scheduled for Sunday, October 25.
The statement was released at 11:32 a.m., the same day President Aleksandar Vucic signed the decree dissolving the National Assembly, formally opening the election cycle. A little over six weeks remain between the signing of the decree and election day, during which election lists must be officially submitted. PUPS is now the second party to publicly confirm, within a week, that it is joining the joint list built around Vucic.
The party’s statement reads:
All 128 of PUPS’s municipal and city committees across Serbia are ready, in action, organization and personnel, to protect and defend the interests of pensioners, farmers and workers alike in the upcoming early parliamentary elections.
PUPS also announced the same day that it would give unreserved backing to Vucic for a future term at the head of the executive. “PUPS will unreservedly support Aleksandar Vucic as the future prime minister of the Republic of Serbia,” the party’s statement says.
Sources differ on the party’s name. Tanjug and Kurir refer to it only by the abbreviation PUPS in their reports, while the portal 021 uses the extended, official name, the Party of United Pensioners, Farmers and Proletarians of Serbia, Solidarity and Justice. The statement is not signed by any named party official, nor does it identify which party body made the decision to join the list. Neither Tanjug nor Kurir, in the reports they carried the same day, named anyone from the PUPS leadership behind the wording.
As priorities for the coming term, the party’s statement lists a socially responsible and economically strong Serbia, dialogue in place of parallel monologues, mutual respect and solidarity between generations. “PUPS’s imperative is a socially responsible and economically strong Republic of Serbia,” the party says in its statement. That is paired with a call for unity, as PUPS states in the same text that only a united Serbia can move forward in the interest of all citizens, echoing the name of the list it is joining. The countryside gets particular attention, with PUPS saying it expects the current pace of rural revival to speed up in the period ahead and for rural development to remain a permanent task rather than a one-time, pre-election measure.
The PUPS decision comes a week after the Main Board of the Serbian Progressive Party, at a session held on September 5 in Nis, unanimously determined that the election list would run under the name “Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia,” with Vucic as its lead candidate and nominee for prime minister. The Serbian Radical Party announced a few days earlier that it would run on the same list and back Vucic for prime minister, as we reported in “SRS Joins Vucic on the United Serbia List.” PUPS is thus the second party from the outgoing ruling coalition to publicly confirm it is joining the joint list, backing the claim of organizational readiness with a specific figure, 128 committees.
Whether the remaining parties that have so far made up the ruling coalition will also join the Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia list should become clearer in the coming days, ahead of the official submission of election lists to the Republic Election Commission before the vote scheduled for October 25.
