Pajtic Denies Vucic: I Didn't Build Student List
Former Democratic Party president Bojan Pajtic responds to Aleksandar Vucic: no friends, relatives or party colleagues of his are on the Student List, which he says he learned about from the media.
Bojan Pajtic, former president of the Democratic Party and a law professor in Novi Sad, today denied claims that he took part in putting together the Student List. His response came on the social network X, three days after Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Pink television’s National Daily newscast that Pajtic and former minister and one-time Democratic Party official Dusan Petrovic were the list’s “real leaders.”
What Vucic Said on September 14
Appearing on Pink, Vucic claimed that despite its name, the Student List has no students calling the shots, and that decisions are made by Pajtic and Petrovic instead.
“The real leaders are Pajtic and Dusan Petrovic, so this is no student list at all, there are no students on it, the real leaders are Pajtic and Dusan Petrovic.”
The president then went a step further, claiming that Pajtic had actually put the list together and that it was made up of his “ideological” followers. He offered no concrete evidence for that claim during the appearance. Vucic also asked the list’s candidates how, in his view, they could claim to be making decisions on their own.
“How is it possible that you’re making your own decisions independently, while someone is herding you like sheep into signing a list you never even saw?”
Pajtic’s Response, With Irony at the Start
Pajtic only addressed the accusation today, September 17, opening with an ironic thank-you to those crediting him with the list.
“I thank the united agencies for the compliment that I put together the Student List, because, in intellectual and ethical terms, I’ll say it again, it’s the highest-quality list this country has seen in the last 36 years.”
After that opening, the Novi Sad law professor categorically rejected the claim and said no one from his circle is on the list.
“Of course, claims like this are a lie, there isn’t a single friend, relative, godparent or party colleague of mine on that list, I found out about its lineup from the media, and I was thrilled.”
According to Pajtic, the recycled story about his supposed influence isn’t aimed only at him, but above all at the students themselves, since it portrays them as incapable of making their own decisions. He also pointed to where the claim originally came from.
“These are repeats of claims from ‘Informer,’ since that ‘outlet’ was the first to run with this falsehood that keeps getting repeated, aimed at belittling the students and painting them as some kind of pawns who can’t think for themselves.”
Informer First Published the Claim in December
According to Pajtic, the tabloid Informer first published the claim that he was “planting his own people” on the list back in December 2025, before the list had even been officially unveiled. Since then, Pajtic says, the claim has kept resurfacing, tied to individual candidates who get linked to him and other former Democratic Party officials.
This isn’t the first time Pajtic has pushed back on such claims. Appearing earlier on the “Bez pardona” show on KTV, he said he had no role in selecting candidates, had no proteges on the list, and that students chose their own representatives for the election.
The day before Pajtic’s denial, on September 15, the portal B92 published an article citing unnamed media sources that claimed Pajtic and Petrovic drew up the full list of candidates. As additional evidence, the article cited the case of Ivan Sebek, who submitted the Student List’s signatures to the relevant authority and who, according to those claims, held party positions during the Democratic Party’s time in power. Neither Pajtic nor Petrovic is recorded as having responded to that specific claim in the B92 article.
Petrovic, the Other Named Official, Has Not Yet Responded
Dusan Petrovic, whom Vucic named just as directly as the list’s other “real leader” on September 14, had not publicly reacted to either the president’s claim or the B92 article by the time this article was published. That leaves Pajtic, for now, as the only one of the two named officials to have given his side of the story.
At the end of his post on X, despite everything, Pajtic unambiguously threw his support behind the very list he’s accused of assembling.
“By the way, I’d vote for the Student List even if it were ten times worse.”
The dispute over who is really behind the Student List comes as the ruling party and the opposition trade accusations over the makeup of opposition election lists ahead of the upcoming cycle. Deputy Prime Minister Milos Vucevic has also weighed in on the same topic, telling TV Nis that the Student List is “a pig in a poke.” Whether, and when, Petrovic will join the debate remains an open question, since his name has come up just as often as Pajtic’s, while his own voice on the matter has so far been missing.
