Antonijevic: Nestorovic Sent Me to Andrej Vucic
Mi Snaga Naroda lawmaker Borislav Antonijevic revealed that party leader Branimir Nestorovic sent him to meet Andrej Vucic, and confirmed Nestorovic is in the hospital.
Borislav Antonijevic, a lawmaker with the Mi Snaga Naroda movement, gave the first public account on September 18, 2026, at a press conference in Serbia’s National Assembly, of the circumstances behind his meeting with Andrej Vucic, brother of the Serbian president. Srpske Novine had earlier reported on the appeal that Antonijevic and fellow lawmaker Slobodan Ilic made to citizens, urging them to vote against the ruling coalition’s list in the October 25 election. At that point, the outlet did not yet have the details of the meeting with Andrej Vucic itself, nor the claim that the matter was resolved with a single phone call.
Antonijevic and a group of lawmakers recently removed from the movement’s presidency insist their expulsion violated both the law and the party’s statute, and that the movement will not be the same in the upcoming election without them. He said the goal behind removing them was not to bring down the movement, but to take certain individuals off the list, because someone was bothered by them raising their own proposals and criticism.
Asked by reporters why he met with Andrej Vucic, Antonijevic rejected claims that the group of lawmakers had tried to take over the movement, but confirmed the meeting did take place.
“I was sent to that meeting by our president, Branimir Nestorovic. Some of our activists in Vojvodina were having problems out in the field, and I was told he could resolve it with a single phone call,” Antonijevic said.
According to Antonijevic, the meeting was prompted by pressure on the movement’s membership on the ground in Vojvodina, where activists, he claims, were attacked by members of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). He did not disclose the date, location or other participants of the meeting. One outlet had previously reported that the conversation took place on August 21, but Antonijevic neither confirmed nor denied that detail in the Assembly. “I’m satisfied and happy, because it isn’t happening anymore,” he added, saying the meeting had served the purpose for which it was arranged.
The meeting itself had earlier been the subject of debate within the party. Footage circulated on social media of a closed session of the movement at which, in cooperation with Aleksandar Vulin’s Movement of Socialists, the meeting was discussed as part of the crisis that led to the expulsion of Antonijevic and his colleagues from the presidency.
Reporters also asked about the health of the movement’s president, Branimir Nestorovic, whose fate has been the subject of internal dispute over the past several days. Antonijevic confirmed media reports that Nestorovic had been hospitalized, but said neither he nor his associates had any more information than what had already been published.
“We found out from the media that he had been hospitalized, and nothing more than that. It isn’t right for more than that to be made public without his permission and his family’s,” Antonijevic said, without specifying which hospital Nestorovic was in or since when.
The dispute within Mi Snaga Naroda has been going on for several days now. A group of lawmakers, including Antonijevic, Branko Lukic, Slobodan Ilic and Ana Ivanovic, had earlier claimed they could not reach Nestorovic and that a coup was being prepared within the movement to remove them from the presidency and push through a coalition with Vulin’s movement. Nestorovic held his own press conference the next day, saying there had been a betrayal at the top of the party, and adding that he had been visiting Moscow, where, he said, he decided that the movement should run in the election after all.
At the September 18 press conference, Lukic announced he would challenge the expulsion in court, calling it unlawful and a breach of the statute.
“What they did to Doctor Nestorovic, who is very ill, and how they convinced him to act unlawfully, I can’t get into that. But everything about our expulsion was done in violation of the bylaws,” Lukic said.
Ilic, for his part, called on citizens not to cast their votes for any party in power, “or their satellites,” but for sovereigntist and other lists capable of bringing about a change of government.
The lawmakers say that if the situation remains unchanged, they will stay in politics without their home movement in the October 25 election. Whether the dispute over the presidency will be resolved by then, and whether Nestorovic, from the hospital or outside it, will influence the final makeup of the list, remains an open question for the coming weeks of the campaign.
