RGZ employees say they are pushed to deliver SNS votes

Employees of the Republic Geodetic Authority (RGZ), the Tax Administration and several other state and public institutions say they are being asked to vote for the SNS ahead of the October 25 election, to sign up for lists of “capillary” votes and to attend party rallies. The claims come from BIRN, which published an investigation on October 20 based on responses from about 180 people to a questionnaire and more than 20 in-depth interviews.

Most of the sources work in the public sector, and some of those who spoke are former SNS members. Most asked to remain anonymous. Srpske Novine has not independently verified the individual accounts, so everything below reflects what the sources told BIRN.

What do RGZ employees say about the capillary vote list?

Eight employees of RGZ, which has more than 2,000 workers, told BIRN they were asked to vote for the SNS and to attend the rallies the party has held since the election was called. By their account, the demands began after a change at the top of the authority: longtime director Borko Draskovic was dismissed in early August, and a few days later Dalibor Babic was appointed acting director.

One RGZ employee described how it looked in his office:

“Since the new acting director arrived, for the first time they have been making us sign a list for capillary votes. Because turnout was very poor, they brought in a party ‘commissioner’ to harass people and force them to sign. Before the rally at the Arena there was a hunt to get us to register to go. Turnout was catastrophic even then, even among those who had signed for capillary votes [did not show up]”

The SNS held its rally at the Belgrade Arena on October 3. An employee of a real estate cadastre office in another municipality says they were also asked to go to the rally in Novi Sad, announced for mid-September. That event was canceled at the time and held on October 16. According to him, the request came with the explanation that attending meant supporting the new head of RGZ. He refused and says he has suffered no consequences so far: “For now nothing, I actually wondered how many times I’d be able to tell them no.”

The cadastre office of a small inland municipality received a request in September 2026, for the first time, to put its employees on a list of capillary votes for the SNS. All of them signed up. One of them told BIRN:

“This has never happened before, everyone is in disbelief. Even older colleagues who have been working since the days of Milosevic”

The same source explains why they signed: “We all signed reluctantly, because the next step is that they transfer us as punishment to other cities we can’t travel to.”

How does the list travel from the institution to party headquarters?

According to the accounts, there is no paper trail apart from the list itself: no emails and no messages. Employees are called one by one into the office of a boss or department head, where they are expected to sign that they will vote for the SNS, go to a rally or bring in 10, 20 or more capillary votes.

BIRN saw a list from a health institution in Vojvodina. Blank printed tables began to be filled in as early as May, before the election was called on September 9. The name of a doctor who serves as coordinator, responsible for collecting the votes, appears at the top of the list. According to an employee’s account, the tables go to the Banovina building and from there to party headquarters, where, as he puts it, every name is checked individually.

Which other institutions are mentioned, and who did not respond?

Four Tax Administration employees said they had to collect capillary votes under threat of dismissal, transfer or a freeze on promotion. Workers at Belgrade’s Infostan claim colleagues went to “Cacilend” and were paid for it. An employee of Srbija Kargo talks about people being sent to call centers:

“Now they send them to a call center and they go there to work and make calls. And then, in the end, they want to leave, and some of the people in that call center tell them: ‘Wait, you can’t go. You got money for this.’ But those women didn’t get any money, and then they realize that someone, the one who organizes them, took the money, that he didn’t give it to them, he kept it for himself”

The pressure, according to the accounts, also reaches associations that work with vulnerable groups and live off grants from ministries and municipalities. A person from one such association says:

“At the ministry we were told: as many votes, as much money. And also: if you don’t support us, we can’t support you either”

An employee of a large energy company claims the firm had about 2,000 workers 15 years ago and now has almost 9,000.

RGZ, the Tax Administration, Infostan, Srbija Kargo and the SNS did not respond to BIRN’s questions.

What does the former Commissioner for Protection of Equality say?

BIRN asked Brankica Jankovic, a former Commissioner for Protection of Equality, for an assessment. She said:

“This is an abuse of existential dependence and fear. It is a classic abuse, a mechanism of pressure that they have refined. Sometimes the pressure comes as ‘well-meaning’ advice: ‘it would be good if you did this,’ sometimes it is more sophisticated, sometimes less, but at other times these are quite brutal methods.”

Jankovic also said that the very act of giving an advantage to those who work for the party is discrimination:

“Giving an advantage is also discrimination, and they have been given the chance not to do what they were hired for at all, but to work for the party. They think the party is their employer, and I have heard exactly that from many people, they say the party is their company.”

What do earlier measurements show about pressure on voters?

Pressure on public sector employees is not a new subject. A 2022 CRTA survey of a representative sample of 1,075 respondents found that 14 percent of Serbia’s population had been under pressure to vote for a particular party. ODIHR reports have cited pressure on public sector employees after every election since 2014, and European Commission reports since 2017.

We have previously written about the database of SNS bots across public institutions (231 institutions, 94 percent during working hours). This is a different kind of material: it is not about social media accounts, but about employees describing what is asked of them at work, five days before the vote.