Aleksic and Kostres urge votes for the Student List
NPS leader Aleksic says his party is a player in the October 25 election despite not being on the ballot, while LSV leader Kostres calls on citizens to vote.
The People’s Movement of Serbia (NPS) is not on the ballot for the October 25 parliamentary election, but its president says the party will work with the Student List to safeguard the integrity of the vote. Miroslav Aleksic said so during a tour of eastern Serbia, in talks with citizens, local boards and party members in Bor and Negotin, and the party published his remarks in a statement today. The same day, Bojan Kostres, president of the League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina (LSV), issued a statement calling on citizens to turn out and back the Student List.
What did Aleksic say about coordinating with the Student List?
Aleksic said NPS is a player in the coming election even though it is not on the ballot, and that it has set up coordination with the Student List on overseeing the vote. The part of the statement that has been published does not specify what that coordination involves. He framed his message to the membership as a call to work in the field:
“We have put everything we have at their disposal, and you did the same in Bor. Until October 25, every conversation with citizens, every meeting and every contact on the ground matters, and that is why I call on all NPS members and activists to be active in the campaign and to back the student list with all available resources ahead of the election”
Aleksic said it is in everyone’s shared interest that the Student List wins and that Aleksandar Vucic, head of the “United Serbia” list, loses. That list’s response to Aleksic’s assessments was not available at the time of writing.
Why is NPS not on the ballot?
NPS formed the “People’s Serbia” coalition together with the New Face of Serbia and Ecological Uprising. The coalition collected signatures and submitted an electoral list, then withdrew it. Aleksic explained the decision this way:
“I am sorry that the other side showed no willingness, even last year, to reach a platform and an agreement that would have made that possible. We had a choice between two things: to enter parliament and be branded ‘Vucic’s opposition,’ or to preserve our integrity, stand on the right side of history and not let everything we have done over the past ten years go up in smoke. We collected the signatures, submitted the list, and then withdrew it. As time goes by, I am more and more certain that we did the right thing. We kept our honor and showed that Serbia matters to us more than the party and political interests”
Aleksic compared Vucic to Slobodan Milosevic. In his words, Vucic could suffer his biggest betrayal on election day itself, as Milosevic once did, when he told members, sympathizers and activists that there was no reason to worry and that they were winning by a wide margin. Aleksic also pointed to the need for a referendum-like atmosphere, because, as he put it, it is “impossible to defeat a totalitarian regime like this without it”.
What does he expect before election day?
Aleksic expects the authorities to try to influence the electoral process:
“The more threatened he feels about his political support, the more I expect him to try to influence the electoral process in different ways, but I think this time it will not be easy. People who want change will vote for the list that is the surest guarantee of it, and that is the student list”
He also announced that NPS’s political engagement does not end on October 25:
“NPS will keep giving full support to the student list and will take part in the campaign with all its capacities until election day. But after that, the fight goes on. We will not stop. Presidential elections are ahead of us, and depending on how the parliamentary elections end, we will make decisions about the presidential race too. We are not a party created for a single election cycle, but a party that should live long and be the backbone of some future government”
In other words, NPS’s decision on the presidential election depends on the outcome of the parliamentary vote.
Kostres: differences can wait until after the election
In his statement, Kostres said the anti-regime front will not fall out and so keep Vucic in power. He acknowledged that LSV does not share all of the Student List’s foreign policy positions, but said “we do not have to agree on every issue to jointly demand the removal of the SNS regime, an end to corruption and the liberation of institutions”. He added:
“We will debate our differences openly when the time comes. We will not extend his rule and Serbia’s decline because of them”
At the end of the statement, Kostres wrote: “The Radical rule of ‘divide and rule’ must not succeed this time.”
The Student List itself is not commenting on post-election coalitions for now, according to Danas. A candidate on that list, Oliver Toskovic, a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, told the latest issue of Nedeljnik that the subject will be discussed only after the election.
