Dacic Vows Peaceful Victory at SPS Campaign Stands

Ivica Dacic, president of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and top candidate on the “Ivica Dacic, Stability Factor” list, visited his party’s campaign stands and spoke with citizens as part of the run-up to Serbia’s early parliamentary election. According to available sources, this marks the first time in the current campaign that he has addressed voters in person, from the field and under a list carrying his own name, rather than from his ministerial office or a podium. The message he brought back from the ground was that Serbia has a silent majority that has had enough of division and conflict.

“There’s a silent majority that has had enough of conflicts, divisions and quarrels, that wants to live normally and without conflict with any political opponents,” Dacic told citizens at the SPS stand.

He immediately clarified what he meant by beating his opponents.

Of course, peacefully, without any conflict with any political opponents. That’s the essence of politics: we will beat them the peaceful way.

None of the available sources say which city the conversation with citizens took place in. N1 and Danas date Dacic’s remarks about the silent majority to September 19, in the late afternoon, while the Glas javnosti outlet did not report them until September 20. It remains unclear, then, whether this was a single appearance or two separate occasions a day apart.

Dacic is running as candidate number two on the list for the upcoming election. The list is led by the SPS, in coalition with United Serbia, the Social Democratic Party of Serbia and the Greens of Serbia. Coalition representatives submitted it to the Republic Election Commission (RIK) on Saturday at 9:35 p.m., with a total of 250 candidates.

Of the 21,266 signatures of support submitted, RIK found 18,162 to be legally valid, meeting the threshold for certification. The list was officially certified on September 14 and will appear as number two on the consolidated ballot.

According to RIK data, the list’s first ten spots go to Ivica Dacic, Dalibor Markovic Palma of United Serbia, Jasmina Karanac of the SDP Serbia, Vladan Zagradjanin, Snezana Paunovic, Dusan Bajatovic, Aleksandar Antic, Novica Toncev, Dunja Simonovic Bratic and Slavica Djukic Dejanovic.

While presenting the names on the list, Dacic also said:

For us, the state of Serbia is sacred scripture, but so is the ordinary citizen: that silent majority. Progress must reach every home.

The tone fits what Dacic has said before about his own party, namely that over its thirty six years of existence the SPS has been one of the key pillars of stability in Serbia. The message about the silent majority and a peaceful win over political opponents is thus becoming the central theme of the ground campaign he is leading, backed by the party apparatus built around the four party coalition.

Formally, the SPS campaign is now entering the stage of direct fieldwork, stand visits and voter meetings, while the party leadership relies on the list it has already had certified and the fixed order of candidates on it. The four party coalition is presenting itself as a unified bloc even before the more intense stretch of the campaign, with a list that passed the signature check and formal certification without procedural delays before RIK.

The early parliamentary election is set for October 25, 2026, and that is the date by which the SPS and its coalition partners will find out whether the message about the silent majority landed on the ground. Until then, as this first field appearance also shows, the party leadership will keep pushing a register of easing tensions rather than sharpening the conflict with political rivals, which is itself the point of the pledge to win by peaceful means.