Zukorlic Files Election List for Movement for Unification
The Party of Justice and Reconciliation submitted its election list to the Republic Election Commission, led by party leader Usame Zukorlic, the third Bosniak column in the parliamentary election.
The Party of Justice and Reconciliation (SPP) submitted its election list, named “Usame Zukorlic (SPP), Movement for Unification,” to the Republic Election Commission (RIK) today, September 16. The list is led by SPP president and Serbian government minister Usame Zukorlic, and was filed in Belgrade after the party spent the previous days collecting signatures of support in Sandzak and in several other Serbian cities.
Signature collection began on September 12 at SPP headquarters in Novi Pazar, then continued at party offices across Sandzak and at branch offices elsewhere in Serbia. Today’s submission opens the formal procedure: RIK checks the documentation and signatures, and only after that decides whether to certify the list.
The decision for SPP to run independently in the early parliamentary election was made by the party leadership at an extraordinary session of its Presidency, held after the election had already been called. The same session set up a Central Election Staff to run campaign preparations. According to the outlet Sandzak Danas, the decision to run alone came after representatives of SDA Sandzak and the Sandzak Democratic Party failed to show up for a meeting Zukorlic had called.
That leaves Bosniaks running in three separate columns in the upcoming parliamentary election. Alongside the SPP list, there is an SDA Sandzak list called “Guardians of Sandzak,” while Rasim Ljajic’s SDP list has already been certified by the Republic Election Commission as a minority list, as this outlet has previously reported.
Movement for Unification as a Cross-Party Framework
A few days before filing the list, on September 5, Zukorlic set up the Movement for the Unification of Bosniaks in Novi Pazar, presenting it as a framework broader than the party itself. At the SPP Election Congress, where Zukorlic was re-elected party president for a new four-year term, delegates also adopted a Declaration on the Unification of Bosniaks, launching an initiative to establish a Forum of Bosniak Political Representatives of Sandzak.
At the start of the signature drive, at SPP headquarters in Novi Pazar, Zukorlic said:
Our message in this campaign will be fewer divisions, more results.
When he set up the Movement for the Unification of Bosniaks, he was more precise about the initiative’s limits:
We don’t want a unification that serves only pre-election purposes. We want a substantive, root-and-branch, fundamental, genuine, sincere and brotherly political unification.
On that occasion, Zukorlic invited SDA Sandzak and SDP to join the planned Forum, arguing that inter-party differences should not stand in the way of cooperation on what he calls key national issues. Neither party has publicly responded to that invitation so far, and both, according to SPP, also skipped the meeting that preceded the decision to run independently.
Former SPP Vice Presidents Now on the SNS List
The filing of the SPP list comes just days after the names of two former senior party officials surfaced on the opposite end of the political spectrum. Samir Tandir, a former SPP vice president expelled from the party in 2022, holds the 43rd spot on the “Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia” list, while Jahja Fehratovic, expelled a year later while serving as vice president and a Member of Parliament, is listed at number 121. The Republic Election Commission certified that 250-candidate list on September 13, for the election called for October 25, 2026.
Tandir’s move alongside SNS was not a surprise, given that the Bosniak-Serb Alliance, which he chairs, had already announced it would back Aleksandar Vucic as the candidate for prime minister. Fehratovic’s appearance on the list has not been publicly explained, though his shift toward the ruling party had already been signaled in early September, in a signed piece for the newspaper Politika in which he praised Vucic’s relationship with Bosniaks.
Before the SPP list can be certified, RIK still has to complete its check of the signatures and documentation, a process that took several days for the SNS list. Until then, it remains an open question whether SDA Sandzak and SDP, whose lists Zukorlic invited to join the Forum of Bosniak Political Representatives, will respond to that invitation at all before the election set for October 25.
