Vucevic to TV Nis: Student List Is a Pig in a Poke
SNS president Milos Vucevic tells TV Nis the average age of Student List candidates is over 50, against 44 on the SNS list, and asks who would run the country that way.
Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) president and one of the lead candidates on the “Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia” list, Milos Vucevic, said this morning, September 16, in an interview with TV Nis, that the Student List is a “big pig in a poke” for Serbian citizens ahead of the coming elections. Comparing the average age of candidates on the two lists, he said the SNS list averages 44 years, while the Student List averages over 50.
“Names and candidates are hidden on that list, let alone the program. I really think it’s a big pig in a poke for our citizens,” Vucevic told TV Nis.
Vucevic added that the public is only now finding out who is actually on the list, and that, in his words, “the list has nothing to do with students, our list averages 44, theirs is over 50.” He asked where a student could even be found on that list, arguing that students, in his view, should be the “foot soldiers” while others take over the actual running of things.
What Vucevic holds against the Student List
The SNS president said nobody has yet heard the Student List’s position on Kosovo and Metohija, and that, in his assessment, both the candidates’ names and the program are being kept from the public. As an example of what he called a contradiction within the same movement, he said some sign a memorandum while others tear it up, and that some want to bury Ratko Mladic while others, in his words, would desecrate him even in death.
Vucevic also accused the blockaders of preventing other political organizations from holding meetings, citing as an example an event in Nis where, he claims, he and Ana Brnabic were not allowed to hold a meeting with the SNS city organization. He said such behavior ahead of elections should worry anyone thinking about who would run state institutions after a potential victory for the other side. “So what are you going to do tomorrow if you come to power,” he asked, adding that it makes no difference to them whether it’s “a rock, a cabbage or a pigeon” on the list, as long as it’s against SNS.
He also defended the multi-party system as, in his view, the best form of democracy known so far.
“Nobody has found or established a better system of democracy than the multi-party system,” Vucevic said.
He argued that blockader politics “always starts with anger and hatred and always ends in blockades and violence,” unlike the politics of the “Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia” list, which, he said, “calls for and fights for unification, not uniformity of thought but unification.”
As results of the ruling coalition’s work, he cited a stable dinar exchange rate over the past 14 years and, he said, the lowest unemployment rate, without giving a specific figure. Marking the Day of Serbian Unity, Freedom and the National Flag, observed the day before, he said freedom “was not given as a gift, it was won” and must be protected.
Has the list responded
As of publication, the Student List had not responded to Vucevic’s claims about the average age of its candidates, nor to his assertions that it is hiding its program and its position on Kosovo and Metohija.
This is not the first time Vucevic has used this tone to preview the coming elections. Speaking earlier in Novi Slankamen, he said the government should be led by whoever listens to the people, a message he repeated today in different words, this time with a direct comparison of candidate ages against a rival list.
The election cycle is thus entering a phase in which party leaderships are turning less often to general messages and more often to direct comparisons with their rivals, by name, by figures and by candidates’ ages. The Student List has so far put forward neither a program nor a position on Kosovo and Metohija, the points Vucevic raised, so his claims, at least for now, stand unchallenged in public.
