Sajn Challenges Ljajic's Minority List at RIK

Members of the Roma Party, acting as private citizens, filed an objection with the Republic Election Commission (RIK) on Wednesday evening, September 16, challenging the decision that declared the “Rasim Ljajic, Ljudski (SDP, CDP)” electoral list valid. Party leader Srdjan Sajn is demanding that the ruling be annulled, arguing that the list’s top candidate and several of its other candidates are publicly known as active members of a majority political party.

RIK approved the list a day earlier, on Tuesday, September 15, ahead of the snap parliamentary election called for October 25. An authorized representative of the coalition between the Sandzak Democratic Party (SDP) and the Montenegrin Democratic Party (CDP) had submitted the list to the commission on Monday evening, September 14. It was the fourth list submitted to RIK for this election and the first to request minority status. Three lists came before it: “Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia,” built around the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS); “Ivica Dacic, Factor of Stability,” built around the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS); and “Student List, Students Are Winning.” RIK has so far approved the lists tied to the SNS and the SPS.

Sajn based the objection on the Law on the Election of Members of Parliament, which he says requires RIK to reject minority status for a list whose top candidate or any of its candidates is publicly recognized as an active member of a party that is not registered as a minority party.

“The essence of our objection is the request to annul the decision declaring the list headed by Rasim Ljajic a minority list,” Sajn said.

According to him, that condition applies directly to Ljajic, who, as founder of the Sandzak Democratic Party, was for decades recognized as one of the leading figures of the Social Democratic Party of Serbia (SDPS), a party that is not registered as a national minority party.

“A careful review of his public statements turned up no instance of Rasim Ljajic, the top candidate on the ‘Ljudski, SDP and CDP’ list, ever telling the public that he was no longer an active member of the majority party. On the contrary, after his resignation Rasim Ljajic continued to state publicly that he remained active and that he still mattered to the SDPS,” the Roma Party said.

The objection, according to the party, also disputes the status of three other candidates on the list: Muamer Bacevac, Edis Durgutovic and Ratko Minic, whom the Roma Party says never informed the public that they had left their party membership or party posts.

On September 15, the day the list was approved, Sajn had already announced that if RIK confirmed its minority status, he would seek a ruling from the relevant courts, including the Constitutional Court. “We must not allow trading in minority votes, nor allow minority electoral lists to be turned into political tools of the majority parties,” he said at the time.

Responding to Sajn’s claims in comments to the Nova.rs portal, Ljajic dismissed them as a personal score-settling attempt rather than a legal matter. “I resigned, everything is clean, all the members of RIK voted. There are members of both the government and the opposition there, do you really think anyone would pass up the chance to object if something were wrong? Srdjan Sajn is doing all of this out of personal animosity toward me, and I honestly don’t care about him, so I would rather not deal with it any further,” Ljajic said.

Srpske Novine previously reported that RIK had recognized Ljajic’s list despite Sajn’s opposition. The decision on whether to accept or reject the Roma Party’s objection now rests with the commission itself, as the roster of minority lists for the October 25 election continues to take shape.