Aleksic Files Request to Withdraw Election List

The People’s Serbia coalition, made up of the People’s Movement of Serbia, the Ecological Uprising and the New Face of Serbia, filed a request with Serbia’s Republic Election Commission (REC) on Tuesday, September 22, asking to withdraw its “People’s Choice” list from the snap parliamentary election set for October 25. Miroslav Aleksic, leader of the People’s Movement of Serbia, announced the move that morning on N1’s talk show “Iza vesti” and described it as a technical procedure.

Coalition representatives had submitted the list to the REC on September 15, and it was certified with ballot position number 9. Even then, the coalition had signaled it would withdraw the list and back the Student List instead. According to N1, the withdrawal request itself includes statements from all three coalition leaders: Aleksic, Aleksandar Jovanovic Cuta and Milos Parandilovic.

How Many Signatures Were Collected?

After filing the request, Aleksic explained the reasoning behind the decision.

“This decision represents the execution of the plan we had already announced: instead of running in the election with our own list, we are directing all available capacity toward a broader gathering of citizens, toward monitoring the election process and toward a joint fight for change, and it was made because we want to direct our entire organization, our people and our resources toward a shared goal,” Aleksic said, according to N1.

Sources disagree on how many signatures the coalition actually collected. Aleksic said, per N1, that “our 10,500 collected signatures show that there is strong readiness among citizens to support us.” Nova.rs and Insajder, however, reported that on the same day, in a statement to N1 television, he spoke of 10,000 legally valid citizen signatures backing the list. Which figure is accurate cannot be established from the statements available so far.

In the statement accompanying the withdrawal request, the coalition also outlined what comes next on the ground: “Our infrastructure and our people will be put to work monitoring the election process.” Specifically, Aleksic said People’s Serbia would field more than 3,000 polling board members across Serbia for the October 25 election. “Serbia needs unity around a shared goal today, not more divisions,” he added.

Why the List Was Withdrawn

On “Iza vesti,” Aleksic tied the withdrawal to the wider opposition strategy for this election cycle. “From the start we advocated for a referendum atmosphere and a united front, but that never happened,” he said, adding that the coalition had decided to help build a full referendum atmosphere around the Student List instead.

Asked why the People’s Movement of Serbia collected signatures at all if it had already planned not to run with its own list, Aleksic said the goal was to demonstrate the party’s capacity. “The goal was to show that we were ready and capable of collecting signatures, that we could run in the election,” he said, adding that the party holds seats in more than 100 towns and municipalities and has 140 local boards.

Aleksic also defended the decision not to run independently this time by addressing the broader question of pro-European opposition unity, which, he said, never materialized despite his own calls for it. “Everyone has the right to make their own decisions. Do I think things could have gone better? Yes, they could have,” he said, arguing that withdrawing the list was still the only correct call under the circumstances. “Once again we made a responsible decision, and in my view the only correct one,” he concluded.

What Remains on the Ballot

With the “People’s Choice” list withdrawn, ten active lists remain on the REC’s register out of the 11 certified so far. The deadline for filing new lists for the snap parliamentary election runs out at midnight on October 4, so the number of contenders could still change before then.

Srpske Novine had previously reported that People’s Serbia planned to withdraw the list by Monday. Whether the votes the coalition had been rallying around its own list actually transfer to the Student List will only be clear once the results of the October 25 vote are in.