Nestorovic Ousts Five From Mi Snaga Naroda Presidency

Branimir Nestorovic, the leader of the Mi Snaga Naroda (We, the Strength of the People) movement, resurfaced last night after seven days during which, according to his own associates, no one in the party could reach him. He turned up at an emergency session he himself had called and, on his own motion, pushed through the removal of five Presidency members who oppose a coalition with Aleksandar Vulin’s Movement of Socialists. The ousted members say the session was held in violation of the party statute, that the coalition with Vulin was never actually put to a vote, and that they have a recording they plan to use in court.

Srpske novine reported earlier that lawmakers from Mi Snaga Naroda had spent days unable to reach Nestorovic, after the Presidency rejected a proposed coalition with Vulin the previous week. Last night’s gathering was the party leader’s first public appearance since then.

What Exactly Happened at the Session

Even the outlets covering it can’t agree on what to call the gathering. Insajder, N1 and Blic describe it as an emergency session of the movement’s Assembly, Danas calls it a party assembly convened by Nestorovic, and Nova.rs describes it as a meeting of part of the membership. Lawmaker and Presidency member Borislav Antonijevic told Insajder that the statute was violated during the session, since under the party’s rules the Assembly cannot remove Presidency members on its own.

“The president can propose a removal, but it then has to be approved by a two-thirds majority of the Presidency and submitted to the Assembly for a vote. That procedure was not followed,” Antonijevic said.

According to him, the announced agenda said the session would discuss running in the elections and the current political situation, but neither item was actually discussed. Instead, on Nestorovic’s motion, the assembly voted to remove Presidency members. Antonijevic told Nova.rs that the meeting had officially been scheduled on the party’s website for 6 p.m., but that organizers tried to start it at 5, so that opponents of the coalition wouldn’t make it in time.

“The meeting happened, and we’re glad every doubt has finally been removed. On top of the fact that the organization was irregular, since the officially announced time on the party website was six o’clock, they tried to hold the meeting at five so we wouldn’t be there for that disgrace,” Antonijevic told Nova.rs.

Forty or Eighty People

The sources don’t even agree on how many people showed up. Antonijevic told Insajder and N1 that around forty people voted, of whom he recognized “maybe 12 or 13,” and that people started leaving right after the vote. Slobodan Ilic, one of the ousted Presidency members, told Danas that about eighty residents of Cacilend had been bussed in, and that they voted for the expulsions before immediately leaving the session.

“An outlaw, illegal assembly was held last night on the premises of Mi Snaga Naroda. Several dozen people from Cacilend were brought in to vote, in violation of the statute, to expel the majority of Presidency members who oppose a coalition with Vulin,” Ilic told Danas.

Antonijevic added, in his interview with Insajder, that delegates were never given lists of who was present or what positions they held, which would have made it possible to check who was even entitled to vote.

Was the Coalition With Vulin Approved

This is where the accounts diverge the most. Antonijevic told Insajder and N1 that the coalition with the Movement of Socialists was never actually approved, and that no decision was made on running in the parliamentary elections either, since both questions fall under the Presidency’s authority by statute, and Nestorovic has not called a new Presidency session. Ilic told Danas much the same: that Nestorovic only mentioned the coalition with Vulin, but that it was never voted on.

“At the start, Nestorovic just mumbled something about needing to go into a coalition with Vulin’s Movement of Socialists and Stamatovic’s Healthy Serbia. But it was never discussed, let alone voted on,” said Ilic, adding that back in July, on Nestorovic’s own proposal, the Presidency had already concluded there would be no coalition with Vulin.

Nova.rs, citing its own sources, reported that the meeting did decide the movement would run in the elections in coalition with Vulin. In his own interview with that outlet, Antonijevic went a step further than what he told Insajder, saying Nestorovic had “genuinely decided to go with Vulin,” even though, he said, no formal Presidency decision to that effect exists.

“I don’t think this is a plan he came up with himself. This is a plan by the people around him, who are trying, and I’m afraid they’ve already succeeded, to tear down his reputation and his patriotic stance. He really has decided to go with Vulin, but after everything that happened and the disgrace it turned into, I’m no longer even sure Vulin will still want to go with him,” Antonijevic told Nova.rs.

On the agreement Nestorovic referenced during the session itself, Antonijevic told Insajder that Nestorovic said a coalition agreement had been signed with three parties, without specifying which ones, and that the Presidency never voted on any such agreement. Nestorovic himself, however, denied to Danas that he was negotiating with Vulin’s movement at all.

“Of course not, just as we aren’t with them either. They came to see us in May, we talked, the way we’ve talked with a lot of people. Our only partner right now is Gajic and his party,” Nestorovic told Danas, referring to Vladimir Gajic’s People’s Party. According to Antonijevic, the Presidency did approve a coalition with the People’s Party, but the agreement was never signed, and the list’s name and the signature-verification forms were never adopted, so signature collection can’t even begin.

The sources don’t agree on which of the ousted members actually attended last night’s session, so that remains unclear.

Ousted Members: “Hats Off to Vulin and the Services”

Five members were removed from the Presidency; of those, only lawmaker Ratko Ristic and Slobodan Ilic have been named publicly. The remaining three names have not been released. Ristic and Ilic held a press conference today, where they spoke sharply about the split.

“What used to be the Mi Snaga Naroda movement has now turned into a branch office of the Serbian Progressive Party. Congratulations to Aleksandar Vulin and the services that pulled this off so masterfully,” Ristic said.

Ristic told party members unhappy with how things have unfolded not to vote for the Mi Snaga Naroda list, but for those who, in his words, showed more resistance to the pressure. He also rejected an accusation he said Nestorovic made against them during the session.

“He accused us of being part of the police operation ‘Lisica,’ set up to break the movement apart, and claimed our real motive was to remove him and get our hands on the movement’s money. None of that is true. We never once discussed removing Professor Nestorovic, who was the movement’s unquestioned leader, and money was never our motive,” Ristic said.

Ilic went even further in describing the change he says has come over the party leader.

“Unfortunately, since July 15, Professor Nestorovic hasn’t been the same man. He doesn’t even look the same, doesn’t laugh the same way, doesn’t talk the same way. What happened to him remains a mystery,” Ilic said, adding that “80 to 90 percent of the people in the movement are absolutely against what’s happening” and that the ousted members will remain “the strongest, fiercest opponents of Aleksandar Vucic’s regime.”

Neither Vulin’s Movement of Socialists nor Gajic’s People’s Party had responded to the events of September 14 and 15 by the time this article was published.

How We Got Here

The dispute over Vulin has been simmering for months. In late May, Vulin and Nestorovic spoke together at a Movement of Socialists rally on European integration, and by July the Presidency, on Nestorovic’s own proposal, had unanimously decided there would be no coalition with Vulin. In late July, Zeljko Veselinovic, leader of the Workers’ Party, broke off talks with Nestorovic, citing preparations for a coalition with Vulin as one of the reasons. On August 1, asked by Danas about talks with Vulin’s movement, Nestorovic gave a one-line answer: “Of course not.”

On September 5, the People’s Party Presidency unanimously voted to form an election coalition with Mi Snaga Naroda. On September 8, the movement’s own Presidency, according to Antonijevic, again rejected the coalition with Vulin by majority vote. Six days later, on September 14, Presidency members held a press conference at the Serbian Assembly to publicly raise the alarm about not being able to reach Nestorovic, and that same evening, the session at which they were removed took place.

Serbia’s snap parliamentary elections are set for October 25. Before then, Mi Snaga Naroda still has to settle who it’s running with, and who actually sits on its Presidency.