Branko Ruzic to Register New Party in November
Expelled SPS vice president says registration of his new party starts in early November, after the October 25 election. Ivica Dacic says the SPS is moving on.
Branko Ruzic, the former vice president of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), said on October 10 on TV Nova’s morning program that registration of the party he is founding will begin in early November, after the parliamentary election scheduled for October 25. The same day SPS president Ivica Dacic replied, saying the party “is moving on” despite the departures.
Ruzic did not say the new party will be registered in November, only that the procedure will start then. He did not say how many people are involved.
What did Ruzic say about the new party?
Ruzic claims the work is already under way. “We are working on founding the party, very devotedly. Program frameworks are being drawn up, an army of people is involved in it,” he said. He added that his idea is not to “reconstruct or create a new SPS.”
He also rejected any link to the wave of resignations from the party that expelled him. “I am not calling on anyone to leave my former party, nor am I involved in it. There are certainly people who are free thinkers, who have their own views, that is evident,” Ruzic said.
On who would make up the new organization, he put it this way:
“The point here is not that we are brought together by what we came out of, or by our political past, but simply by how we see the future Serbia, the future of our society.”
He then added that it will include “many people who were once in the SPS, or still are today, many people who never held a party card, and many people who were certainly in some other political organizations.”
Why is he waiting until after the election?
The timing is tied to election day. Ruzic assessed that “October 25 will be the end, or the beginning of the end, of that establishment led by Aleksandar Vucic,” so his idea, as he put it, is to wait for that moment “both personally and, of course, my like-minded colleagues, with a new political organization.” He voiced hope that there will be more such organizations, “that the political spectrum will be filled in the right way, that there will be no kind of manipulation there.”
In his view, students freed citizens from fear and drew in many who were previously uninterested in politics, so turnout and energy will be decisive. “When I say that nothing will be the same anymore, it is evident that credibility and trust, simply, are gone,” Ruzic said.
How did Dacic respond?
Speaking to TV Pink, Dacic played down the departures from the party and stressed that the SPS is not stopping. “Ten, 15, 16 people leave the party, and yesterday in the Toplica District I enrolled 16 young people. We are moving on,” he said.
He said the SPS has been attacked “all these years because it is the strongest bulwark in defense of Serbian national and state interests, because it is a factor of stability.” As Slobodan Milosevic once said, he added, the answer to those attacks is a flat “forget it.” He rounded off the message with the words: “I do not know whether the message is clear to them, the SPS is indestructible like the burning bush that is not consumed.”
The numbers cannot be verified. Dacic speaks of ten to 16 people, while N1 only states that after Ruzic’s expulsion “a large number of members” left the SPS, without giving a figure. We reported on the departure of 13 SPS members in Rakovica on October 9.
How did the split come about?
Ruzic was expelled from the SPS on August 31 for, as the party explained it, “continuous, conscious and deliberate violation of the Statute, failure to meet the obligation to carry out the decisions of party bodies and the unified policy of the SPS.” Before that, he was suspended from all functions for six months over his attendance at the large protest of students and citizens in Belgrade on March 15 last year. After the suspension he also kept urging the SPS to pursue an independent policy and not become an integral part of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party.
There are 15 days left until the election. According to Ruzic, the new organization will go before the public only after it: registration begins in November.
