Ponos: SRCE Stays in Race, Uzice Committee Collapses

Zdravko Ponos, leader of the Serbia Center party (SRCE), answered a question late in the evening of September 15 with a single word: will his party change course and withdraw from the election in favor of the Student List? “No,” he wrote. That closed a question that had opened the day before, when the “Narodna Srbija” (People’s Serbia) coalition pulled its own list and threw its support behind the students, and several local SRCE committees asked their own leadership to do the same. The election is set for October 25.

Ponos shared an N1 article on X, one headlined with the question of whether SRCE would shift its position after “Narodna Srbija” withdrew, and added just that one word alongside it. SRCE is running in the “European Serbia” coalition together with the Party of Freedom and Justice (SSP) and the civic movement “Solidarnost” (Solidarity). Marinika Tepic and Zdravko Ponos are the list’s lead figures, while SSP leader Dragan Djilas holds the top spot on the list itself.

Srpske vesti reported the day before on the decision by the “Narodna Srbija” coalition, made up of Miroslav Aleksic’s People’s Movement of Serbia, Milos Parandilovic’s New Face of Serbia, and Aleksandar Jovanovic Cuta’s Ecological Uprising. That coalition submitted a list carrying 10,500 signatures to the Republic Election Commission and withdrew it immediately, explaining the move as necessary to create a so-called referendum atmosphere in the election, meaning a single list running against the ruling structure.

Jesic: we start from Bibure and push on

Goran Jesic, leader of the “Solidarnost” movement and SRCE’s partner in the “European Serbia” coalition, responded to Ponos’s post the next morning. His reply, also posted on X, read:

“A pretty embarrassing bit of journalism. But fine. It’s worth remembering that this kind of pressure doesn’t really work on a Dalmatian, an engineer and a military man. We start from Bibure and push on.”

Jesic’s message confirmed that the coalition is continuing its campaign without changing its composition, despite the pressure that had meanwhile emerged from within SRCE’s own ranks.

Uzice committee has effectively ceased to exist

The SRCE city committee in Uzice went the furthest. Committee president Goran Radosavljevic and seven of the eight other members resigned, effectively ending the committee’s existence. Radosavljevic and city councilor Ivana Filipovic also offered the party their council mandates. The members who left the committee announced they would back the Student List in the upcoming election.

A similar, if less drastic, message came from Krusevac and Leskovac, where SRCE city committees publicly called on party leadership to reconsider the decision to run independently.

The Krusevac committee, in a statement signed by party representative and councilor Dusanka Milosavljevic, along with Main Board member and councilor Bojan Nedeljkovic and member Jelena Zivkovic, argued that the only path to removing the government is building a united front:

“That is why we do not want our name, our vote or our political engagement to contribute to an effort that we believe reduces the chances of changing the government.”

The SRCE Leskovac committee, in a statement carried by Jugpress, asked leadership to offer its resources to the Student List and take part in monitoring the election process, “or in some other way agreed with the aforementioned list.” The statement said “this is not the moment to weigh differences in positions or methods of struggle,” adding that giving up an independent list would not mean turning one’s back on the alliance, but rather a step forward on a shared path.

Djilas: our goal is to outdo the Socialists

While the local committees pushed back, SSP leader Dragan Djilas explained on the podcast “Dezurni krivac” (“The Usual Suspect”) why the coalition’s leadership still considers an independent run the right call:

“Our job as European Serbia is to be bigger than the Socialist Party of Serbia, because that’s the only way that, combined with the Student List, we can reach 50 percent.”

Djilas added that the “European Serbia” list is not trying to claim the title of the biggest “anti-Vucic list,” and that it is ready to cooperate after the election exclusively with the Student List, but not with parties it considers tied to the Socialist Party of Serbia.

SRCE’s leadership is thus sticking with the decision it made weeks ago, even as an open rift has emerged within its own local committees in three cities. Whether similar demands will come from other towns before October 25, and whether Uzice will remain the sole example of a committee completely falling apart, is a question the rest of the campaign will answer.