Cacak councilor Bozovic joins SNS, Dveri respond

Aleksandar Bozovic, a longtime Dveri member and the party’s councilor in the Cacak City Assembly, has joined the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), just under two weeks before the parliamentary elections scheduled for October 25. Dveri’s city organization responded on Sunday, October 11, with a statement calling the move shameful.

Bozovic announced his decision on October 9 at a press conference in the premises of the SNS City Board in Cacak, alongside the board’s commissioner, Milos Stevanic.

How did Bozovic explain his decision?

Bozovic said his political career began in the SNS, continued in the Movement of Serbian Youth and then in Dveri, and that he is now returning to the party he started with. He gave as his reason a wish to be part of a politics in which he can work concretely and take responsibility. At the conference he said:

“When hard times come, a man has to decide where he stands. I am returning to the SNS because I believe Serbia now needs peace, stability and responsibility, not even deeper divisions.”

He spoke of his former comrades in Dveri without reproach. “Politically we are going our separate ways today, but I respect what we did together and I am grateful for it,” Bozovic said.

Stevanic said Bozovic would sit in the SNS councilor group in the local assembly, and tied his return to the party to Aleksandar Vucic’s call for unity and gathering together. The progressives described the move as the political transfer of the year.

What did Dveri say to Bozovic?

In its statement, Dveri’s city organization recalled that there have “always been Judases ready to sell themselves for 30 pieces of silver”. That indirectly cast Bozovic as someone who betrayed the movement, although the statement does not use that word for him. Dveri also used the election for a broader message:

“The coming parliamentary elections are a historic test for every citizen of Serbia: whether they stand on the side of the progressive mafia in power, or on the side of the students’ struggle for justice, freedom and democracy.”

Dveri added that the election would show “the trail of every beast that has been posing as something else until now”, and that “all the fakes in the opposition” should openly take Vucic’s side, “so that the opposition ranks are cleansed for some normal engagement in politics in the future”. The movement has said several times before that it supports the students in the upcoming vote.

Bratislav Simovic, president of Dveri’s city organization, said he had “long ago made a break with Bozovic” and that since the 2023 election Dveri have been “in the business of cleansing the ranks”. Simovic also rejected the label the progressives used for the move, political transfer of the year, arguing that the event cannot be called that.

Where did Dveri stand after the previous election?

At the previous parliamentary election, Dveri ran in a coalition with Zavetnici, but the coalition failed to clear the three percent threshold. Zavetnici then joined the Serbian government, and Dveri’s then president, Bosko Obradovic, resigned. Dveri have been an extra-parliamentary movement since.

In the statement, Dveri frame the October 25 election as a test between the authorities and the students, while Bozovic announced his move two weeks before it. At the conference, Bozovic said he would not say a bad word about his former comrades, and Dveri answered him with a statement.