RIK Approves Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia List

The Republic Election Commission (RIK) ruled at its 17th session, held on September 13, to approve the Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia list for the snap parliamentary elections called for October 25. The session was chaired by RIK president Vladimir Dimitrijevic, and the list received 13 votes out of 14 members present, according to Sputnik, with one abstention.

The list was assigned ballot number one. It is led by Aleksandar Vucic, a member of the Presidency of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), whom the SNS Main Board also named as its candidate for prime minister should the list win.

The list was handed to RIK a day earlier, on September 12, by authorized representative Darko Glisic, alongside SNS president Milos Vucevic and coalition partners Ana Brnabic, Adrijana Mesarovic, Sinisa Mali and Milos Pavlovic. As we reported that day, the submission included 250 candidates for parliament and 224,557 supporting signatures, packed into 200 boxes. The handover was not without a hiccup: footage from N1 showed that on one of the boxes, the list leader’s name had been printed as “Aleksndar Vucic,” missing the letter “a.”

Of the signatures submitted, RIK confirmed 209,130 voter statements as valid. According to Sputnik, more than 10,000 statements were rejected because the signers were not entered in the unified voter register, because the same voter had signed more than once, or because they had backed more than one list, leaving a gap of 15,427 between the signatures submitted and those accepted.

Before the ruling, the Bureau for Social Research (Birodi) had asked RIK to reject the list if it found that the list, its name, its documentation or the way it was presented failed to meet legal requirements. Citing Article 111 of the Constitution, Birodi argued that the president must carry out the office as a representative of the state and of all citizens, not as an electoral asset of a single political party. The organization also asked the commission to forward any evidence of possible violations of the Law on the Prevention of Corruption to the Anti-Corruption Agency, and any suspected criminal offenses to the competent public prosecutor’s office.

The session also recorded the view of commission member Marko Danilovic, who, per Sputnik, said: “We believe the conditions have been met for RIK to approve the list.”

On the same day the SNS list was submitted, RIK also received the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) coalition list, Ivica Dacic, Stability Factor, backed by 21,266 signatures, on which the commission had not yet ruled by the time the SNS list was approved.

The Serbian List announced its support for the Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia list a day before the approval. Its statement said the support carries particular weight for Serbs in Kosovo, given the continued institutional backing, protection of national interests and preservation of the rights, security and living conditions of the Serbian people there. The Serbian List said it expects a win for the list to bring new jobs, higher wages and pensions, further investment in healthcare, education and infrastructure, and greater support for Serbian families and local communities in Kosovo. The October 25 election, the statement continued, represents a choice between a policy of development and support for the Serbian people and those who, in the Serbian List’s assessment, publicly renounce the Serbian people and Kosovo and have spent months blocking Serbia.

The deadline for submitting election lists, under RIK’s schedule, expires on October 4, and the commission rules on each list within 48 hours of submission. Before that date, the number of approved lists for the October 25 election is set to keep growing, with RIK still to rule on the SPS-led list and any others still to arrive.