US Embassy Congratulates Student List on Election
The US Embassy in Belgrade has issued its first statement on the October 25 election, a post on X published five days after the vote.
The United States Embassy in Belgrade has congratulated the Student List and the people of Serbia on the snap parliamentary election held on Sunday, October 25. The congratulation was posted on the embassy’s official X account (@USEmbassySerbia) on the evening of Friday, October 30, five days after the vote. It is the first statement from Washington on the election that we have recorded.
What did the embassy post?
The post tags the Student List account, @studentblokade, and the congratulation is addressed to the people of Serbia as well, not only to the list. The embassy wrote:
The United States congratulates the Student List @studentblokade and the people of Serbia on the parliamentary elections held on October 25.
Later in the same post, the embassy set out what Washington expects from the period ahead:
We look forward to an orderly transition of power and to working together to advance the strategic partnership between the US and Serbia, as well as regional stability.
The post is short. It names no individual, neither the ambassador nor a State Department spokesperson, so the congratulation is signed only with the embassy’s name. The stated shared goals are the strategic partnership between the two countries and stability in the region.
What do the preliminary Republic Electoral Commission figures show?
According to preliminary results from the Republic Electoral Commission (RIK), 8,338 of 8,392 polling stations have been counted, about 99.4 percent. On that basis RIK records the Student List at 53.04 percent of the vote and the “Aleksandar Vucic - United Serbia” list at 38.97 percent. These are preliminary RIK figures. Final results will follow the repeat vote scheduled for November 1 at 53 polling stations.
The election silence runs from midnight on October 30 until 8:00 p.m. on November 1.
Who else has reacted since the election?
The American congratulation is not the first international reaction to the election. A European Union spokesperson said earlier that the election in Serbia does not change the dialogue on Kosovo, as we have already reported. The US Embassy did not address that question in its post. It stayed with the congratulation, the transition of power, the strategic partnership and regional stability. No reaction from officials in Belgrade to the American post has been published so far.
Users of X also noticed the delay. Politika reports that some of them received the congratulation with bewilderment and in a joking tone, remarking that five full working days had passed since the election, and asking whether former Serbian president Vojislav Kostunica happens to be working in the embassy’s offices.
