Vucic: I'm Resigning September 25 or 26
Serbia's president gave, for the first time, a precise window for his resignation, and said he will spend the campaign's final month as an ordinary citizen, driving his own car.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic laid out, for the first time, a precise window for his resignation as head of state on September 11 at the Palace of Serbia. The day, he said, will be September 25 or 26, right after he returns from the United Nations General Assembly session in New York. He plans to spend the final month of the campaign for the parliamentary election, set for October 25, as an ordinary citizen, by his own account, without the office of president.
“As soon as I get back from New York, I will submit my resignation. Don’t hold me to it exactly, but I think it will be the 25th or the 26th. That’s when I’ll resign, and then I’ll go into the campaign as an ordinary citizen, which the law doesn’t require of me. That’s my own wish, I don’t want to campaign for prime minister while I’m president of the Republic,” Vucic said.
He made the statement while answering a question from an N1 television journalist about the exact resignation date. The portal 021 reports that the question was asked at a press conference held on September 11, while the Tanjug agency and the TV Zona Plus portal say the answer came during the presentation of new measures to improve citizens’ living standard, in the same hall of the Palace of Serbia. Both sources agree it was the same appearance on the same day, differing only in how they describe what prompted the question.
Why this particular move
A week earlier, on September 5, Vucic was elected at the Serbian Progressive Party’s Main Board as the list holder for “Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia” and as the party’s candidate for prime minister. The government of Djuro Macut is meanwhile operating under a technical mandate, after proposing on September 7 that the National Assembly be dissolved. The parliamentary election is set for October 25, which means the announced resignation would fall a month before the vote.
The president stressed that the law does not require this step of him, and that none of his predecessors in the office has ever taken it.
“No president has ever done this, they all campaigned from the position of president, or the other way around, from the position of prime minister. I want to be the first, I want to go in as an ordinary man and an ordinary citizen,” he explained.
He also described how he imagines the campaign’s final month, without the office and without any set schedule.
“For the last month of the campaign, I’ll be an ordinary citizen. I’ll drive my own car. I’ll get myself some kind of little truck too, not a big one, a small one, so I can address people here and there. That’s how I’ll travel, on my own, wherever it occurs to me. I’m going without any particular plan, so wherever I end up in a village, I’ll say a few words to the people, wherever I end up in a town, I’ll say a few words to the people,” Vucic said.
Reporting to the Agency and the procedure after resignation
Part of the statement concerned an obligation the president has toward the Anti-Corruption Agency. Under the Law on the Prevention of Corruption, an official must, within seven days of an election being called, report the activities he carries out in that capacity. Vucic said he had done so, including the press conference at which he was speaking, as well as a military exercise that had been planned six to seven months earlier.
“Now I’ve also given you the exact date. If you’d been listening more closely, you could already have known the exact date. My word means something, I always keep it,” Vucic said, adding that he expects the media outlets that doubted his intention will now have to admit they were wrong.
On the reporting obligation itself, he said that although he signed the law himself, he considers it excessively strict toward the position of supreme commander.
“Under these foolish laws, I’ve reported all these activities, including this very press conference. Including even the military exercise we planned six months ago,” Vucic said.
Under the Law on the President of the Republic, once the resignation is submitted, the duty is temporarily taken over by National Assembly Speaker Ana Brnabic, for at most three months, within which period an early presidential election must be called.
Reactions
Brnabic, on the same day in Batajnica, where she was touring a signature-collection drive for the SNS list, said the announced resignation shows that Vucic relies on the support of citizens rather than on the office he holds.
“Soon Aleksandar Vucic will no longer be president of Serbia, but what Aleksandar Vucic has isn’t an office. That’s exactly why Aleksandar Vucic has announced a move that is quite unusual: once he finishes his state duties, he will resign and, for those last days of the campaign, go out as an ordinary citizen,” Brnabic said, adding that no president of Serbia before him had ever made such a move.
Sources have not so far recorded an official reaction from opposition parties to this announcement. The Belgrade daily Danas noted on September 12, the day after the statement, that Vucic, despite the promise, had still not submitted his resignation, leaving the September 25 or 26 date, for now, only an announcement.
We wrote about this same story earlier, when Vucic signed the decree calling the election for October 25. The next step that will show whether the announcement holds is the resignation date itself, within the window the president set for himself.
