Srdanovic Declines TV Debate, Vucic Responds With Video
Serbia's president claims in an Instagram video message that Ilija Srdanovic, the Student List's lead candidate, turned down a televised debate ahead of the October 25 election.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic posted a video message to his Instagram account, username avucic, on Tuesday evening, September 15, claiming that Ilija Srdanovic had turned down his offer of a televised debate. Srdanovic heads the Student List at the snap parliamentary election set for October 25, where the list appears as number three on the ballot. B92 carried the clip at 7:36 p.m., Kurir at 7:47 p.m., and Tanjug at 8:31 p.m.
The response Vucic refers to in his message was actually given earlier that same day. Srdanovic spoke to the daily Danas in a statement published at 5:40 p.m., before the president had even recorded his own message. Srdanovic, a cardiologist by profession, was reacting to an earlier announcement Vucic made on Pink television that he would challenge whoever topped the student list to a debate.
What Vucic said
In the message, Vucic calls the list a “student-blockader list without students” and says he offered the debate so citizens could compare the two sides’ programs and visions. He said he had been certain the offer would be accepted.
“I was certain that Mr. Srdanovic would gladly accept this televised debate,” Vucic said in the video posted to Instagram.
The president says that in any such debate he would have spoken exclusively about plans for Serbia’s future, not about subjects he says would have been uncomfortable for his opponent.
“I planned to speak exclusively about the plan, the program, about the vision for Serbia,” Vucic said, adding that the refusal showed the opposite of what he had expected.
“They didn’t dare to show up. He doesn’t dare to show up, even though I wouldn’t have spoken about things that might be uncomfortable,” the president said in the same message.
Neither Srdanovic nor the public was told which television station would have hosted the debate or what date had been proposed for it.
Srdanovic’s response
Srdanovic, in his statement to Danas, briefly declined to comment on the president’s remarks, and did so before Vucic’s message had even been published.
“I simply have no comment. I have far more important things to do than think about what Mr. Vucic says,” Srdanovic told Danas.
He added that the changes the student movement is promising would not depend on the outcome of any debate with the president.
“We will deliver those changes, absolutely, through the student movement’s program,” Srdanovic said in the same statement.
According to Danas, this marks the first time in Vucic’s 14 years in power that he has offered a televised debate to a political opponent outside the formal election process. The only exception is the runoff round of presidential elections, where a debate is part of the official procedure and where the president has taken part before.
Campaign ahead of October 25
The exchange comes in the opening weeks of the campaign for the snap parliamentary election, in which the Student List is running as one of the alternatives to the ruling coalition built around the Serbian Progressive Party. In his message, Vucic urges citizens to decide “who they will place their trust in,” while Srdanovic frames his response around the idea that the list’s program does not depend on the president’s moves.
Just over a month remains until October 25. Whether the televised confrontation will ultimately take place, on which station and under what terms, remains open for now, since neither side has proposed a date or format the other would accept.
